Abstract.Arctic air temperatures have increased in recent decades, along with documented reductions in sea ice, glacier size, and snowcover. However, the extent to which recent Arctic warming has been anomalous with respect to long-term natural climate variability remains uncertain. Here we use 145 radiocarbon dates on rooted tundra plants revealed by receding cold-based ice caps in the Eastern Canadian Arctic to show that 5000 years of regional summertime cooling has been reversed, with average summer temperatures of the last ~100 years now higher than during any century in more than 44,000 years, including peak warmth of the early Holocene when high latitude summer insolation was 9% greater than present. Reconstructed changes in snow line elevation suggest that summers cooled ~2.7 °C over the past 5000 years, approximately twice the response predicted by CMIP5 climate models. Our results indicate that anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases have led to unprecedented regional warmth.

The new research offers the first direct evidence that the present warmth in the Eastern Canadian Arctic exceeds the peak warmth there in the Early Holocene, when solar energy reaching the Northern Hemisphere in summer was roughly 9 percent greater than today, said Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-Boulder), who led the study. The Holocene is a geological epoch that began after Earth’s last glacial period ended roughly 11,700 years ago and which continues today.

“The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is,” said Miller, a geological sciences professor and a fellow at the university’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. “This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

The ice cores showed that the youngest time interval from which summer temperatures in the Arctic were plausibly as warm as today is about 120,000 years ago, near the end of the last interglacial period. “We suggest this is the most likely age of these samples,” said Miller.

The new study also showed summer temperatures cooled in the Canadian Arctic by about 2.8 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) from roughly 5,000 years ago to about 100 years ago – a period that included the Little Ice Age from 1275 to about 1900.

“Although the Arctic has been warming since about 1900, the most significant warming in the Baffin Island region didn’t really start until the 1970s,” said Miller. “And it is really in the past 20 years that the warming signal from that region has been just stunning. All of Baffin Island is melting, and we expect all of the ice caps to eventually disappear, even if there is no additional warming.”

Temperatures across the Arctic have been rising substantially in recent decades as a result of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Studies by CU-Boulder researchers in Greenland indicate temperatures on the ice sheet have climbed 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1991.

The region of Northeast Canada (Baffin Island, Ellesmere Island) and west Greenland certainly seems to be a hotspot of recent warming. The west Greenland warming was discussed in the recent post Chasing Ice. I have personally been focussing on the collapse of the Ellesmere ice shelves, which has been quite dramatic in recent years, for a recent summary see this post at Dosbat.

Miller et al. assume that the Baffin Island melting is attributable to AGW. Maybe it is. In the Chasing Ice post, I noted that the peak glacier discharge from West Greenland occurred in the 1930’s. The Ellesmere ice shelves also saw a melt back earlier in the 20th century circa the 1930’s. The Miller et al. paper does not remark on any evidence of warming in the 1930’s, or the LIA or MWP for that matter, but note only a cooling over the past 5000 years, with marked warming in the past 100 years. The reasoning behind the Miller et al. conclusions is rather complex, with a number of assumptions, I’m not sure what to make of their arguments.

In any event, how representative of the Arctic is their findings from Baffin Island? Well, it doesn’t even seem to be too representative even of Ellesmere Island and West Greenland.

There is another paper published almost concurrently, which hasn’t gotten any media attention as far as I can tell, but it does make one think twice about automatically attributing the Baffin warming to AGW:

Eurasian Arctic climate over the past millennium as recorded in the Akademii Nauk ice core (Severnaya Zemlya)

T. Opel, D. Friezsche, H. Meyer

Abstract.Understanding recent Arctic climate change requires detailed information on past changes, in particular on a regional scale. The extension of the depth–age relation of the Akademii Nauk (AN) ice core from Severnaya Zemlya (SZ) to the last 1100 yr provides new perspectives on past climate fluctuations in the Barents and Kara seas region. Here, we present the easternmost high-resolution ice-core climate proxy records (δ18O and sodium) from the Arctic. Multi-annual AN δ18O data as near-surface air-temperature proxies reveal major temperature changes over the last millennium, including the absolute minimum around 1800 and the unprecedented warming to a double-peak maximum in the early 20th century. The long-term cooling trend in δ18O is related to a decline in summer insolation but also to the growth of the AN ice cap as indicated by decreasing sodium concentrations. Neither a pronounced Medieval Climate Anomaly nor a Little Ice Age are detectable in the AN δ18O record. In contrast, there is evidence of several abrupt warming and cooling events, such as in the 15th and 16th centuries, partly accompanied by corresponding changes in sodium concentrations. These abrupt changes are assumed to be related to sea-ice cover variability in the Barents and Kara seas region, which might be caused by shifts in atmospheric circulation patterns. Our results indicate a significant impact of internal climate variability on Arctic climate change in the last millennium.

Recall that Kara/Laptev Seas is in the heart of the lynch pin region for the Stadium Wave. Note, Marcia Wyatt did not have any data sets from the Baffin/Ellesmere region of the Canadian Arctic to include in the stadium wave analysis.

Clearly, there is substantial spatial variability of climate variability in the Arctic, with Opel et al. noting a see-saw between the Eurasian vs North American Arctic and seasonal variations (annual vs summer). Especially interesting is the absence of MWP and LIA in some of these high latitude data sets.

In any event, extrapolating from one location in the Arctic to inferring Arctic-wide change is clearly not supported. It further seems that single locations don’t have a very large radius of influence, viz the differences between Baffin and Ellesmere.

The natural internal variability in the Arctic seems to be an exceedingly complex dance between atmospheric circulations, sea ice, ocean circulations and ice sheet dynamics, on a range of timescales. We have some hints about how all this interacts, but much is unknown. In light of this, simplistic inferences about global warming in the Arctic seem unjustified.

There is always ‘quite a bit of doubt’ over science at WUWT.. mainly because its a conspiracy theorist echo chamber.. Watts has admitted he has received funding from the Heartland Institute, a neo-conservative, political lobby group, which itself receives considerable funding from the Koch Brothers.. a couple of billionaires who also provide funding for the Tea Party.. and Koch Industries employees received a management email suggesting who they should vote for in the last US Presidential elections.. and it wasn’t Obama.

No, everything I wrote is verifiable and in the public domain.. WUWT’s conspiracy theorist community, on the other hand believe the entire scientific community is involved in a conspiracy to assist the ‘New World Order’ ..which is a mania, not science.

WUWT is a blog run by someone who left college with no scientific qualifications… posting cherry picked information and then nailing an unqualified opinion to the end of it, does not magically transform piffle into scientific fact.
The problem for reputable scientists debating fundamentalists’ dogma, is that it lends a veneer of respectability to the fundamentalists..while adding little, if any value to scientific understanding.. in the same way that sharing a debating platform with Creationists, serves only to enhances the ‘scientific’ credibility of Sky fairy fanatics.
‘Balanced’ scientific debate does not benefit from wheeling in every swivel-eyed loon, who wants to explain how the scientific community is in fact a pawn of our shape-changing, Reptilian overlords, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones Club or the Elders of Zion.

Yup – that’s how they do it, and that’s how you’re doing it. Pick a few facts that seem so significant to you, build a fairy-tale around them, and presto! The Koch brothers control the Dark Side. Can’t be that the Koch brothers have a certain point of view and support it, and George Soros has a certain point of view and supports that, and loads of people on both sides actually happen to agree with each of them – and no one cares.
If you could take a step back, you would see how you sound.

I posted the definition of psychological projection on the other thread. Fits here as well.

A conspiracy of conspiracists. You can’t make this stuff up.

Not to mention, this latest drive by commenter is jut repeating the old CAGW chestnuts hurled against WUWT since its inception. You would think an anti-conspiracy conspiracist would come up with something original to prove his non-conspiratorial bona fides.

“..build a fairy-tale around them, and presto! .. Can’t be that the Koch brothers have a certain point of view and support it..” – Miker613

I have no problem with the Koch brothers having a political opinion.. but that is the point, its a political opinion, not science.

‘Discovery’ the quarterly newsletter of Koch companies, has published a number of contrarian Climate articles, promoted books by Climate Contrarian authors, alongside those articles and recommended Climate Contrarian organisations, as sources of further information on the subject, to its employees.. including the National Center for Policy Analysis, the Heartland Institute, the Institute for Energy Research and the Texas Public Policy Foundation.. strangely neglecting to mention that those are all neo-conservative ‘Think Tanks’ for political lobbying, not reputable, scientific research organisations.. and that they have received funding from.. Koch.

In fact, when the only reputable scientific Climate study that included some Koch funding.. the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.. published its findings, inconveniently they confirmed the “existing temperature data was “excellent.”

All of which was an enormous embarrassment for WUWT –
“I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong,” – Anthony Watts
..fine sentiments, except he didn’t.

Lamna nasus | October 28, 2013 at 2:55 pm |WUWT’s conspiracy theorist community, on the other hand believe the entire scientific community is involved in a conspiracy to assist the ‘New World Order’ ..which is a mania, not science.

No, what is mania is your strawman conspiracy theoryclaim.

It doesn’t require a conspiracy for an organization to work towards its own betterment. That is business as usual. And that is precisely what state-funded climate ‘science’ that advocates more taxes and other expansion of the state, amounts to.

It is those like yourself who maintain that state-funded science is objective, who are the conspiracy theorists, implying as you do that state-funded scientists are organizing in secret to be honest rather than advance the interests of their paymaster. (You know, the guys whose modus operandi Climategate revealed).

Eight committees have investigated the ‘Climategate’ allegations, their published reports, find no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.. a fact that strangely, continues to elude WUWT and the neo-conservative fraternity’s ‘rigorous’ ‘research.

Okay, I take back the word “bizarre”. I guess for you it’s normal. Your every post shows the same fringe conspiracy theories. You trust anything however silly if it supports your theories. You ignore everything else. As I said, you don’t seem to know how you sound. I could swap a few of your nouns and adjectives, find you a few different “studies”, and you could be a Truther or a Birther, or both.

As for climategate, the problem is that the investigations are investigating “fraud” and “scientific misconduct”, and the real points were never investigated – they couldn’t be, because they were explicit in the emails: These guys were acting as politicians, not scientists. That’s neither fraud nor misconduct, but so what? No one trusts politicians.

I am always perplexed that AGW supporters miss the whole point of climategate. For a decade before, the Team had been pushing a narrative. “We don’t bother with those fake skeptics. They aren’t really scientists, they’re jokes. Block their publications? Hah! We don’t need to do that – no journal would even look at them. We’re busy doing science, we don’t have time to think about these oil-money politicians and their puppets.” All explicitly disproved in the emails. Show me one investigation that even touched on the subject.

But AGW supporters do miss these points, and in fact have kept right on saying them. The rest of us are bound to see them as out of touch with reality.

Lamna nasusWUWT’s conspiracy theorist community, on the other hand believe the entire scientific community is involved in a conspiracy to assist the ‘New World Order’ ..which is a mania, not science.

There is no such “conspiracy” theory. The claim that there is, is just Lamna;s well-oiled dishonesty at work again – trying to revive the tired old “conspiracy” strawman. What he keeps trying to bury his head in the sand about, is that you don’t need a conspiracy to explain people and organizations acting to further their own interests.

Instead you deftly switch to a completely different issue – a claim that the Tea Party is funded by the Koch Bros. Because, it seems, you ludicrously imagine the Tea Party is the font of skepticism regarding the blatant vested interest and endemic corruption in government climate ‘science’.

Eight committees have investigated the ‘Climategate’ allegations, their published reports, find no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct.

Investigating these ‘investigations’, we found that UEA and the others all used tax money to run very efficient self-exoneration exercises, all of which were themselves utterly corrupt and biased.

How else could gross scientific conduct like hiding data, circumventing peer review, deleting evidence of what they’d done, and fraud like hiding the decline, be overlooked ?

And if this was just a few rotten apples at work, one could perhaps live with it. But the ongoing deafening silence in response to this from most of the government climate ‘science’ community, tells us they are every bit as crooked as Mann, Jones et al, and that virtually the whole government climate science barrel is rotten.

Edit – Apologies Gail, all previous responses had not had a reply button next to them, so when I initially posted this reply, it was out of sequence in the commentary

‘To this you wisely produce no answer whatsoever I notice.’ – Gail

Actually I covered it in my previous posts regarding conspiracy theorists at WUWT.. but I’ll repeat it.. the global AGW conspiracy of scientists theory is piffle, it’s just a variant on the usual right-wing twaddle, that always gets an extensive airing in times of economic difficulty.. its also worth remembering the current head of the IPCC was voted for by the ‘skeptic’ Bush administration, so the fact Pachauri is not a scientist (but replaced someone who was) is a point that astute Contrarians would actually be well advised to avoid.. especially taking Exxon’s documented memo to the White House on the subject, into consideration.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1940117.stm

Indeed its ironic, since the current economic difficulties are a direct result of free-market evangelism, promulgated by Chicago School of Economics zealots at ‘Think Tanks’ and political astroturf projects, of the sort sponsored by Koch Industries.. Globalised Free Market economics, not as cuddly as its adverts…

There is no global conspiracy in the reputable scientific community.. the reason Watts et al. get laughed at, is because Watts is not Einstein, Darwin or Galileo.. Watts is a political pundit, scientifically unqualified to make authoritative comment.. and his pet theory was proved wrong by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.. at which point, first Watts wanted ‘peer review’ (something he normally derides).. then when that didn’t help his case, Watts just threw his toys out of the pram.

Dissent in the reputable scientific community is how science works, by incrementally expanding our knowledge.. but reputable, scientific dissent is not the same as political Contrarianism, gussied up in a borrowed lab coat.

Simple.. because it didn’t happen.. ‘Climategate’ was nothing more than a political smear campaign.. designed to muddy the waters, in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009.
One of the hallmarks of conspiracy theories is that they don’t stand up to close inspection.. which is why ‘Climategate’ collapsed under the official spotlight.
Lack of evidence is not proof of conspiracy.. its proof of a lack of evidence.

Lamna nasus,I’ll repeat it.. the global AGW conspiracy of scientists theory is piffle, it’s just a variant on the usual right-wing twaddle,

I’ll repeat this : What is piffle, is your imputation that skeptics embrace a conspiracy theory – just a variant on the usual left wing / totalitarian twaddle. A strawman, to be more precise – an act of dishonesty.

Furthermore – as you also just ignore – It doesn’t require a conspiracy for an organization to work towards its own betterment. That is just business as usual. And that is precisely what state-funded climate ‘science’ that advocates more taxes and other expansion of the state, amounts to. It is those like yourself who maintain that state-funded science is objective, who are the conspiracy theorists, implying as you do that state-funded scientists are organizing in secret to be honest rather than advance the interests of their paymaster. (You know, the guys whose modus operandi Climategate revealed).

And as regards Climategate, you are just deep in denial. The evidence is there in black and white – senior IPCC scientists hid data, circumvented peer review, fiddled graphs to hide the decline, and went about destroying evidence of what they did. What’s more, very few of their government-funded colleagues to this day see the least problem with such blatant fraud in pursuit of political correctness.

The fact that the offending universities bribed their friends to run cover-up operations that overlooked all this, proves nothing – they were every bit as corrupt as the frauds they exonerated.

“It doesn’t require a conspiracy for an organization to work towards its own betterment. That is just business as usual.” – Gail

Exactly, I couldn’t agree more.. its elements of the business model I am criticising.

Other contributors may describe it as a conspiracy theory.. but it is simply a case of highlighting dubious business practices, because they distort the Market.
Especially when the organisations involved appear to be so modest about the work they are doing… if it is such a useful business model and efficient tax management tool, that it attracts millions of dollars of investment; it could be argued it deserves more publicity –

‘Billionaires secretly fund attacks on climate science –
….The Knowledge and Progress Fund, whose directors include Charles Koch and his wife Liz, gave $1.25m to Donors in 2007, a further $1.25m in 2008 and $2m in 2010. It does not appear to have given money to any other group and there is no mention of the fund on the websites of Koch Industries or the Charles Koch Foundation.

‘Tea Party climate change deniers funded by BP and other major polluters
….. An analysis of campaign finance by Climate Action Network Europe (Cane) found nearly 80% of campaign donations from a number of major European firms were directed towards senators who blocked action on climate change. These included incumbents who have been embraced by the Tea Party such as Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, and the notorious climate change denier James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma.’http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/24/tea-party-climate-change-deniers

Just to clarify, you are saying that most of the global scientific community are involved in a Climate conspiracy run by politicians.. what was the purpose of this conspiracy, is it all governments and and is the international media involved in the conspiracy too?.. it’s difficult to judge, without links to corroborative evidence.

Hey, GAIL….as I recently asked Waggy: Do you work for one of those right wing think tanks trying to throw gasoline on the anti0agw fire?? If so, could you tell me who I could apply to for a similar job?? In need $$$

According to Milankovitch cycles, we are in a part of the Holocene that should favor growing Arctic sea ice, and it was going as expected until about 100 years ago, but now something non-Milankovitch is occurring that has rapidly reversed that multi-millennial trend. That is the bottom line of these papers.

@Tim: Which only goes to show that the warming thus far has been beneficial to mankind, as, had we fallen into an ice age, mass starvation would be a likely result.

Bear in mind that in each 100,000 year Milankovitch cycle, the rise from 180 to 280 ppmv of CO2 takes five to ten thousand years while the decline back to 180 ppmv takes ninety thousand years. So your great-grandkids aren’t likely to starve on that account, though overpopulation might do them in.

Jim D: Maybe you don’t know, but adding CO2 stops the earth from cooling and reverses the trend.

The effects of adding CO2 depend on the conditions prevalent at the time the CO2 is added. CO2 affects multiple energy transfers at multiple levels of the environment. Because 23% of incoming solar radiation (mostly UV) is absorbed high in the atmosphere and radiated spaceward by upper atmosphere CO2 without ever reaching the lower troposphere, increased CO2 at that level may increase the rate of energy radiation spaceward, producing a net cooling effect.

Also, energy is radiated by CO2 from the relatively warm equatorial region to the relatively cool polar regions, which have less cloud cover than equatorial regions. Adding CO2 may speed the radiation of energy from the equator to the poles, providing a net cooling effect at the equator.

Compared to total energy flows, these energy flow changes are slight, very small compared to the approximation error of the equilibrium calculations based on simplified physics.

MIke Flynn: Please don’t bore me with regional temperature variations. They are both pointless and misleading.

Everything that happens does its happening in specific times and regions. Regional temperature variations are both important and illuminating.

Consider the T^4 Stefan-Boltzman radiation law. Radiation is proportional to the average value of T^4 over the regions, not proportional to [mean T]^4. Using [mean T]^4 instead of mean[T^4] in calculations entails an approximation error larger in % terms than the error in the measurement of T, and compared to the change in mean T supposedly introduced by increased CO2.

Regional variations in T are important in estimating the net energy flows of all the energy transport processes.

Jim D: The current warming has just started ramping up in the last few decades, but some haven’t noticed it yet.

Who exactly didn’t notice the warming from the late 70s to the late 90s? Given the 15+ years of little or no warming since then, it is at best premature to refer to ongoing “ramping up”. If the non-warming continues a little more, we’ll be able to say with some confidence that “climate change has occurred yet again”, and maybe even go back to our former worry about unprecedented cooling.

Matthew Marler, yes a CO2 fingerprint is the cooling of the stratosphere and that seems to be occurring. Meanwhile the surface and troposphere warms more efficiently at higher latitudes due to less shielding by H2O, but eventually everywhere warms to some extent, as is known from eons of climate data.

Jim D | October 26, 2013 at 1:38 pm |
Matthew Marler, the 30-year trend is completely unabated, and that is the one to pay attention to, to avoid being misled by decadal natural variability.

=======

Actually, Jim, the trend is not completely unabated as you say. If one plots the 30 year trend from 1973, 1975, 1977 and 1983 to present one clearly sees that the latest 30 year trend (1983-2013) is lower than the others.
So indeed, the trend is not unabated.

In the NH cryosphere the reversals such as arctic sea ice,Greenland cooling,and the increase in Siberian (Eurasian) September snow cover, the reversibility suggesting natural variation .The later excursion being 63% above the mean (at levels last seen in 1977)

With the AO being in a negative state all the ducks are aligned for the NH winter.

Mike Flynn, that is why I said you don’t understand the 33 C. I think you imply that this insulating warming effect by a gas is impossible, but it ends up being just physics. Ideas of insulation are also used in engineering. It works.

With great respect, the law to which you refer applies to idealised objects, which have no existence in the real world. The Earth changes its physical characteristics over arbitrarily small time increments.

Calculating precise “averages” is impossible, not to say useless in real terms.

An example is that of a IR transparent container of water at a rolling boil, being photographed with an appropriate IR camera. The resultant picture, if sensitive enough, shows regions within the container difference in their radiative “temperature”.

And so it is with the Earth. Night tends to be colder than day, the Poles are generally colder than the Equator and so on. Examining an individual region may be representative of the average temperature of the Earth, or it may not.

One thing we can say with some certainty is that the Earth is cooling. Surrounding it with the finest insulator known to man may slow the cooling, but it will cool nevertheless.

You said “I think you imply that this insulating warming effect by a gas is impossible, but it ends up being just physics. Ideas of insulation are also used in engineering. It works.”

Rather than spending time worrying about what you think I may be implying, you might care to read what I wrote.

I know this is oft times difficult for Warmist zealots, but I’m sure you can do it if you try. Alternatively, you might go and look for an insulator that can stop an object from cooling. Literally. Come back in 12 months and report your progress, if you like.

Or you can accept my word that no perfect insulator exists in the real world that we experience.

What favors growing ice on land is warm wet water to provide moisture for snow. The warm wet times are necessary to replenish ice on land. After the water gets cold and the surface freezes, the snowfall stops.

Consensus theory used Milankovitch to make earth cold and then rebuilds ice. It can not happen that way. Snow only falls when oceans are warm and wet.

Our most snow records have happened following our record open arctic Septembers. Evey Time. Look at actual data.

Milankovitch can push temperature up and down but it cannot push it out of bounds. the upper bound is set by the huge snowfalls that occur when the Polar Sea Ice is Thawed. the lower bound is set by the snow that does not fall when the Polar Sea Ice is Frozen.

for the past ten thousand years, Arctic and Antarctic ice core data shows temperatures bounded inside plus and minus 1 degree C for most of the the time and bounded inside plus and minus 2 degrees C for all of the time. We are well inside the 1 degree C bound right now.

Arctic Polar Sea Ice is melted by warm water that flows in with the Gulf Stream. When oceans get warmer the Polar Sea Ice melts and turns on the Snow Monster. When oceans get colder the Polar Sea Ice freezes and turns off the Snow Monster. Antarctic Sea Ice is melted when oceans are warmer and it snows more. Antarctic Sea Ice is frozen when oceans are colder and it snows less. These two Polar Sea Ice Cycles do provide the thermostat for modern earth. Years before the Polar Sea Ice Cycles developed, the temperature swings of earth were not as tightly bounded. The upper bound was higher and the lower bound was lower.

The significant difference between now and before is the Polar Sea Ice Cycles. Now, we have them and tighter bounds. Before, we did not have them and we had wider bounds. Look at actual data.

I believe you are talking about events that occur over 1,000’s of years so day to day or even decade to decade noise won’t be relevant for those time scales. Also, I do not believe that we know the timing of these many 1,000’s of years events such that we can say it should have started by now. So your comment is in error.

Jim D | October 26, 2013 at 11:09 am |
I am talking about a climate trend over the last hundred years that has become increasingly obvious over the last fifty. Each decade is now significantly warmer than the previous (pause included).
=========
Wrong again Jim. If one plots the running ten-year (centered). mean since 1970, one sees that there was a peak in about 2006 and the mean has been down since the.

k scott denison, You get the same “pause” effect if you stop your graph in 1994. That’s just because the centered running mean doesn’t smooth over the end point deviation from the trend. The latest few years have been below the trend. So they show up. When the warming resumes, they will be smoothed over just like the 1994 “pause” and all other such “pauses” (La Nina events) are smoothed over when the ENSO cycle reverts to the mean (or when volcanic aerosols from large eruptions rain back down).

manacker, I prefer decades because that cancels out most of the solar cycles. Solar 11-year cycles have an amplitude of 0.1-0.2 C, so they can hopelessly confuse the trends, being of a similar magnitude to a decadal trend.

And the current SC24 is very inactive. Very likely least active since SC14 in the early 20thC.

We’ll see how that impacts the decade say from 2008 to 2017 and how that will compare with the previous decade 1998 to 2007.

Of course, the absolute temperature anomaly over a decade is less important for the future than the trend over that decade (since it includes past warming) – and the current decade already shows a linear trend of slight cooling (albeit at a slower rate than the warming of the previous decade, so the average temperature is, of course, higher despite the cooling trend).

Curiously, IPCC always discussed warming trends in the past (AR4, TAR), but now that the trend has shifted to slight cooling, the graphs are all about “warmest decades” instead.

Yet, AGW explains the difference between now and a century ago quite nicely. To deny AGW, first you have to explain why it isn’t the CO2 increase, then you have to come up with something to replace it.

What is clear from multiple data sources is that there was a general downward cooling trend during the past 5000 years or so of the Holocene. This downward trend was punctuated by warming periods and much cooler periods- like the LIA. There was some natural recovery from the LIA, but this was complete by 1900. Coincident with the LIA recovery, the human carbon volcano begin to erupt– slowly at first, but with great vigor over the past several decades– now adding over 2 ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere every year. This positive forcing from the HCV now drowns out all the internal variability of the system when taking the largest and most stable measurements of energy in the system on decadal timeframes. The forcing from the HCV most likely began to equal and then surpass internal variability around 1960 or so.

No evidence so far of any reversal of the long term multimillenial cooling trend, which consists of many multicentennial (and shorter) warmings/coolings, with the coolings dominating (otherwise no long term cooling). The latest multicentennial warming (since the LIA) seems to be plateauing though.

” We have some hints about how all this interacts, but much is unknown. In light of this, simplistic inferences about global warming in the Arctic seem unjustified.”

Yes, the regional variation variation of Arctic temperatures indicate that extrapolation to the whole Arctic is unjustified. Because the bulk of global heat is generated in the N. hemisphere and more evaporative cooling in the southern we would expect a result like this.

This study confirms the results of other similar studies and all together cover a much broader range of the Arctic than Judth’s post may imply. Here’s a nice quote from an well done article on this study:

“Early results from additional vegetation samples gathered from sites in Greenland and Norway indicate a similar warming trend, Lehman said.

The findings are a “big deal” for showing that current temperatures are higher than the Holocene maximum, even though solar forcing was greater back then, said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who did not participate in the study.

David Pompeani, a paleoclimateologist and doctorate candidate at the University of Pittsburgh, added that the study’s strength was the number of samples and the extensiveness of the radiocarbon dating.

This study confirms the results of other similar studies and all together cover a much broader range of the Arctic than Judth’s post may imply

I am afraid you could also say: This study is not confirmed by the results of other similar studies, all together covering a range broad enough to get a reasonable idea. With contrary results. Are you not curious to investigate why are you forgetting it so happily?

“WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | October 26, 2013 at 8:53Citations?
The high arctic doesn’t have a a lot of atmospheric water vapor to make as strong a GHG blanket and this is even more true during the winter when the air is even drier.”
———————-
Here is what the IPCC says:
“The projected 21st-century temperature change is positive everywhere. It is greatest over land and at most high latitudes in the NH during winter, and increases going from the coasts into the continental interiors. In otherwise geographically similar areas, warming is typically larger in arid than in moist regions. {10.3, 11.2–11.9} ”http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-5-2.html

At least half of the 0.2 degrees was natural. So we get perhaps 0.6 with Arctic amplification? The fact is that recent warming from greenhouse gases is no big deal – and therefore this study is underwhelming. Scary stories emerging from the ‘consensus’ that most recent warming is anthropogenic notwithstanding.

The global warming theory tells us that we should expect to see the greatest warming in high-latitude winter temperatures.
Yet this paper blames the purported increase in summer temperatures on global warming.
You can’t have it both ways.

The global warming theory tells us that we should expect to see the greatest warming in high-latitude winter temperatures.
Yet this paper blames the purported increase in summer temperatures on global warming.
You can’t have it both ways.
”

Citations?
The high arctic doesn’t have a a lot of atmospheric water vapor to make as strong a GHG blanket and this is even more true during the winter when the air is even drier.

Webster, It is nice to see you taking note of the importance of water vapor. Originally, polar amplification seemed to place too much importance on CO2 because of the grossly over-estimated CO2 forcing estimates. Now that the ridiculously high CO2 sensitivities are by and large discredited, everyone can start focusing on the old stand-bys Solar and Volcanic forcing.

JimD, Sun spot numbers are a bit of a red herring. Back in 1816 I doubt the count was all that accurate will all the volcanic aerosols screwing with the optical depth. That is why isotope based dTSI reconstructions seem to have an edge on the sun spot number reconstructions. When you combine satellite era TSI composites with the “background” noise TSI reconstructions you are basically combining solar and volcanic forcing which produces a better fit.

In general JimD, the sun spot number standard is dead. Since you are up to date on all the current events in climate science I would expect you to know that since composite TSI actually shows there should be a “pause” while SSN doesn’t :)

The effect of CO2 relative to H2O is greater in drier air. I think everyone agrees with that. You would notice a CO2 effect more when the air is drier. The tropical ocean surface is much more blanketed by H2O and the overall GHG effect would be largest there, but not the greatest impact of increasing CO2, at least until the ocean has warmed which takes more time than land due to its thermal inertia.

captd, you are trying to dismiss the fact that sunspot numbers tripled between 1910 and 1940, and have declined since then, more rapidly recently. If now you say that this isn’t a factor, you have contradicted yourself about solar effects. Volcanic effects, yes, we can see in the 19th century, from my plot, land was a lot colder than sunspots would indicate, but the ocean was tracking sunspots. This is possibly volcanic effects having more impact on land temperatures, since CO2 wouldn’t have been doing much back then.

JimD, “captd, you are trying to dismiss the fact that sunspot numbers tripled between 1910 and 1940, and have declined since then, more rapidly recently. If now you say that this isn’t a factor, you have contradicted yourself about solar effects.”

Very impressive sounding JimD, complete Bull$hit, but impressive. SUN are unreliable as a TSI proxy and spectral irradiance proxy. You tend you use the SSN like a good minion when the spirit moves you. If you carefully consider what I said, volcanic and sun spot number based TSI are merged inconsistently as the quality of data acquisition improves. Your resorting to SSN is typical “disinformation” used by the minions clinging to an over played theory. You will say something like it can’t be the sun then quote some idiotic 4 to 6 C “sensitivity” estimate from the 80s to inspire politics not science.

captd, maybe you haven’t noticed that the recent decline in sunspot numbers is a sign of declining activity and people are talking about another Maunder Minimum. You can’t dismiss SSN so easily as a measure of solar activity. I think you only dismiss it in your own mind because it counters your argument, but having raised solar effects, you now want to say we don’t really know what they are anyway. Proxies like Be10 seem to support SSN for the early 20th century, but, no, you won’t have any of that.

JimD, ” Proxies like Be10 seem to support SSN for the early 20th century, but, no, you won’t have any of that.”

You are exceptionally dense today. Lief Svalgaard has made it a point to try and educate the supposedly educated on the issues of Sun Spot Numbers and the Cyclomania that can evolve from using data and incorrect data. Proxies like 10Be do tend to follow some of the SSN record but not all. The 10Be/14C reconstructions of TSI “seem” to indicate that solar and volcanic aerosols combined have an impact on 10Be making them a potentially useful proxy for “COMBINED” Solar and Volcanic forcing. It seems you cannot separate solar and volcanic very well prior to the satellite era.

Once you are aware of that, the TIM composite TOA TSI indicates that SSN is basically drivel since this current minimum has higher TSI than the Dalton minimum with nearly the same SSN count.

You however persist in living in the Climate Past by not looking at more current data which reveals the issues in the data used to form high “sensitivity” estimates. So I am looking at the best available data while you are looking to defend a failing theory :)

captd, so when even the skeptics (Soon) talk of the rise to the Grand Maximum (Usoskin) of solar activity by 1940 explaining some warming, you say that is piffle? I thought everyone agreed, but maybe you don’t. Can you say what happened in terms of solar activity between 1910 and 1940?

JimD, ” Can you say what happened in terms of solar activity between 1910 and 1940?”

I can say the combined solar and volcanic forcing was near a minimum in 1941 at a point where the internal 60 year internal oscillation was near a peak. There was more NH volcanic forcing from 1915 to 1930 than SH activity that help drive the internal oscillation. The net change in “Global” temperature between 1890 prior to the turn of the century volcanic activity was ~ 0.15C from the 1878 peak to the 1942 peak. That is right at the margin of error of the temperature data.

captd, so the rise to the Grand Maximum means nothing, just some yet unnamed volcanoes that canceled it out in the 1930’s, and didn’t create any of the early 20th century warming (Dust Bowl etc.) that was observed. Are you listening to yourself? Was it all CO2 then? That was the only rising forcing according to you.

captd, so when we see it warming in 11-year sunspot cycles, we only see the effect from the cycles a few hundred years ago. No, some part of the warming has an immediate and measurable effect, especially over land. CO2 is also having immediate effects in places. Different areas respond at different rates. Globally, it is a combination of rates.

JimD, “captd, so the rise to the Grand Maximum means nothing, just some yet unnamed volcanoes that canceled it out in the 1930′s, and didn’t create any of the early 20th century warming (Dust Bowl etc.) that was observed. Are you listening to yourself? Was it all CO2 then? That was the only rising forcing according to you.”

Where did you get your degree? The Auburn College of Ventriloquism? Nothing I have said could possibly construed as saying the Grand Maximum means nothing. I think the jury is still out on what actual solar variability there may be. But if you have a 1 Wm-2 prolonged reduction in energy absorbed at the surface you have a 1Wm-2 effective energy imbalance. It took 500 years for the LIA minimum to be seen in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool and it has taken 300 years so far for it to recover. Anyone that tells you the LIA ended magically in 1900 is blowing smoke up your butt.

captd, you said the combined solar and volcanic forcing was near a minimum in 1941. That can be construed as the Grand Maximum having no effect or possibly a negative one. And you have to say this in order to assert that the 60-year internal cycle explains that warming. I can see how any kind of solar trend from 1910-1940 goes against your internal cycle idea, by explaining the same warming trend, so you are backed into a corner that opposes that possibility.

JimD, “captd, so when we see it warming in 11-year sunspot cycles, we only see the effect from the cycles a few hundred years ago. No, some part of the warming has an immediate and measurable effect, especially over land. CO2 is also having immediate effects in places. Different areas respond at different rates. Globally, it is a combination of rates.

Climate is not 11 years or 30 years or 60 years, it is however long it takes. If the solar cycle is truly cyclic and zeros out it impacts weather not climate. The question is what really is zeroing out. If the oceans are not in equilibrium or whatever state may be approximated as an equilibrium, the “normal” forcing allows warming or recovery. If you don’t know what “normal” is you can’t say squat about “forcing”. Paleo helps figure out what “normal” might be.

Land is fast response with lots of noise, land use, black carbon, CO2, amplifications of all of those which is why OHC is the new “metric”. However, SST and OHC seem to correlate extremely well providing another “metric” that is useful. There is no CO2 “signature” in the SST data. There is an indication of a very long term secular trend in the SST data though.

The major ‘green house gasses’ are water vapour and CO2. In locals without water vapour the major GHG must be CO2. Thus, logically, the greatest effect of rising CO2 will have the greatest impact where water vapour levels are lowest. It follows that the Antarctic winter and Western Chilean coast should be impacted more than anywhere else.

You almost had me there, until I noticed the word “relative”. It’s actually the overall effect, due to radiative physics, and not just the relative effect. As the NOAA link provided by Manacker above says:

The largest warming is expected to occur during the winter months in northern North America and north-central Asia

Note the absence of the word ‘relative’.

The tropical ocean surface is much more blanketed by H2O and the overall GHG effect would be largest there,

Again, look at the figure in the NOAA article and see if it agrees with your assertion.

If warmists can’t even agree amongst themselves then how can they expect the rest of the world to agree with them?

The major ‘green house gasses’ are water vapour and CO2. In locals without water vapour the major GHG must be CO2. Thus, logically, the greatest effect of rising CO2 will have the greatest impact where water vapour levels are lowest. It follows that the Antarctic winter and Western Chilean coast should be impacted more than anywhere else.”

Likewise the tropics where one has some number like, 80% of entire energy of the sun reaches the earth surface, one also has very levels of water vapor. So somewhere around 3% H20 gas as compared to 0.04%
CO2 gas.
Or nearly 100 times more H20 and H2O is stronger greenhouse gas.
Tropics gets more energy and is warmer therefore per unit of greenhouse gas it should “trap” more heat [at least according the greenhouse effect theory”].
But perhaps due to “saturation” and the existing uniformity of temperatures in tropics and near the ocean areas, the deserts, and polar regions should be easier areas to detect the CO2 “finger print”

Of course, the “science” (whoever that is) doesn’t care where individuals live.

But the “winners and losers” principle is about people (individuals).

Some will win from the kind of warming our planet might theoretically experience over the rest of this century, while some may lose.

The good news is that more warming is expected to occur at higher latitudes (extending growing seasons across northern Eurasia and North America) than lower ones, more is expected to occur in winter (when there are more human deaths from cold) than in summer (when there are already far less human deaths from heat). All “winners”, so far.

And the theoretical warming that could occur at tropical or sub-tropical latitudes (where it could be a problem for individuals living there) is much smaller, especially in summer (when the problem could be most acute). So fewer “losers”.

@gbaikie: The major ‘green house gasses’ are water vapour and CO2. In locals without water vapour the major GHG must be CO2. Thus, logically, the greatest effect of rising CO2 will have the greatest impact where water vapour levels are lowest. It follows that the Antarctic winter and Western Chilean coast should be impacted more than anywhere else.”

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes H2O and CO2 close the same portions of the atmospheric window. This is not the case. Picture a room with two windows, each of which when closed prevents some heat loss. Regardless of whether the H2O window is open or closed, opening and closing the CO2 window will have an effect. You have to ask yourself whether that effect will be larger or smaller when the H2O window is open. You’ve argued that the CO2 window’s effect is greater when the H2O window is open. Does this make sense to you?

These scientists should try farming barley in Greenland before they proclaim “unprecedented.” The Northwest Passage was open and navigated by Amundsen in 1903 and 1906, by Larsen in 1940, 1942 and 1944.

After researching the log-books of Arctic explorers spanning the past 300 years, scientists believe that the outer edge of sea ice may expand and contract over regular periods of 60 to 80 years.

Dr Chad Dick, a Scottish scientist working at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said: “Cycles of 60 to 80 years have been identified before in atmospheric temperature records in the Arctic. The old records that we recovered from ships’ logs and other sources may show that similar cycles are present in sea ice.”

The polar explorer Clive Waghorn, who lives in Limekilns, Fife, said the idea of regular periodic changes in sea ice was “entirely credible”.

“You read stories of the old whalers and sailors in the Arctic in some seasons coming back with no catches at all because they weren’t able to get as far north as they could in other seasons,” he said.

“These scientists should try farming barley in Greenland before they proclaim “unprecedented.””

Bringing back the barleyhttp://www.economist.com/node/7852916Or at least they did until the world started warming up again. Average temperatures in Greenland have risen by 1.5°C over the past 30 years. The barley is back. Kenneth Hoeth has been growing it, but only as an experiment. Several farmers in southern Greenland are now farming potatoes, turnips and iceberg lettuces commercially.

“The Northwest Passage was open and navigated by Amundsen in 1903 and 1906”

I would hope so. Amundsen was 110 years ago he had sailing ships and the t model ford was yet to be invented.heck , you could navigate it in a day in a helicopter, let alone a season. Or 10 seconds on google maps . Get real or get a life.

Ya, it’s easy going up there……”The Northwest Passage after decades of so-called global warming has a dramatic 60% more Arctic ice this year than at the same time last year. The future dreams of dozens of adventurous sailors are now threatened. A scattering of yachts attempting the legendary Passage are caught by the ice, which has now become blocked at both ends and the transit season may be ending early…….The real question is if and when the Canadian Coast Guard(CCG) decides to take early action to help the yachts exit the Arctic before freeze-up… or will they wait until it becomes an emergency rescue operation?”

The Vikings didn’t have greenhouses for their barley. And they didn’t settle in Greenland to study the climate and conduct botany experiments. If scientists today can replicate the Vikings, they can proclaim “it’s precedented!”

Those 22 yachts caught in the ice at the North West Passage weren’t denying global warming. They were praying for global warming! They just encountered what NASA satellite saw. There are more Arctic sea ice now than in the last six years.

You must have forgotten those that tried and failed this summer. Many vessels had to be abandoned, frozen in ice. Further north has had record cold since 1958 according to DMI. Sea ice up 29% on last September too.

I fully agree with what you are saying about what happen in the NW passage this year, but let us not exaggerate. Most of the boats which got stuck this year have been removed from the water, and will overwinter with no problems. Boats like the Arctic Joule, have, I believe, been abandoned, but there is not the money to make it worthwhile preserving them.

Appell, spare us from your ignorance. We don’t need your nonsense. Take it somewhere else. So ice melts only horizontally not vertically? The area is smaller but you believe it is thicker? Summer months minimum ice determines how much ice will be retained in the next cycle. Hence whether ice volume will be increasing or decreasing. That’s why scientists are monitoring it. But you don’t know that of course.

It’s a waste of time responding to people like you. You simply ignore facts and invent contrived explanations to insist your personal belief. You ignore the 15-year warming pause, you ignore the increased Artic sea ice. Your convenient excuse is AGW takes centuries. So how the hell do you know it’s happening? We only have one century of high CO2 emissions.

On the other hand, natural climate cycles have been happening for millions of years. What we see today already happened many times in earth’s geologic history. High atmospheric CO2, 15C to 22 C global temperature. Nothing new to earth. The only thing new are greenies proclaiming the sky is falling!

This research clearly shows that arctic warming has occurred at a scale not witnessed for 44K years. Bearing in mind that there has been no ice at the poles for approximately 70% of the Earth’s existence one wonders to what extent human activity has caused this current day phenomenon?

Given that 44k years is a relatively small slice of the temporal trajectory of the Earth since it was formed from gases flung from the sun, it appears likely that there were previous episodes of icing followed by warming at the poles, and this being the case, human actvity cannot be blamed.

phatboy said “If you take an ice cube out of the freezer, it will slowly melt. You don’t have to heat it any further for it to melt.”

This is true if the environment that you speak of is unchanging. The scenario that I was thinking of is that the environment is constantly changing (as climate is known to do) getting warmer and then getting colder and then getting warmer again and so on.

The warm period went on for longer than any previous warm period, because the ice had not melted and so for 44k years the warm period never extended for as long. QED

Any particular patch of ice takes as long as it takes to melt – it could be 100K years, it could be 100 years, or 100 days – it might warm and cool many times in the interim, it might not. You can’t infer anything from it.

“Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt, great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones… at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.”
(Washington Post, Nov. 2, 1922)

“The Warming Arctic” (Meteorological Magazine 73; 1938)

Arctic warming related to warming phase of PDO. This 30-year cycle may be ending soon.

“The last time the PDO changed phase was in 1977, an event that some have called the ‘Great Climate Shift of 1977.’ … Arctic sea ice cover was observed to start shrinking in the 1980s by our new satellite measurements – which coincidentally began in 1979, right after the Great Climate Shift of 1977.” (Roy Spencer, 2010)

At the risk of falling into the same trap of extrapolating data from one small location across a large region as the lead post authors have done, let me post you the temperature record for Illulissat, a location near the mouth of the Jakobshavn Glacier that has a long-term temperature record.

But unlike the authors of the “Unprecedented” paper, let me warn you with a caveat that this is just one location in the Arctic, which happens to have a long-term temperature record.

And here it is.

Ta-tah!

You will note that the period around 1930-40 was warmer than the period 1990-2000. Also that there was a strong warming trend over the first half of the 20thC and a flat trend over the second half.

Just one data point, of course, but then there is also the study of Chylek et al.

“Arctic warming related to warming phase of PDO. This 30-year cycle may be ending soon.”
——
This would be the current meme of a certain group of AGW skeptics, but given that they hold this meme, calling them skeptics is probably a wrong word choice.

That Skeptical Science chart confirms Arctic was warm in 1930s and another warming cycle started in 1980s coinciding with the warming phase of PDO. So you’re probably trying to confirm what Dr. Spencer said without you realizing it.

BTW the minimum Arctic sea ice extent this year is higher than the five annual minimums in the last six years.

“The cooler conditions this summer also helped preserve more of the first-year ice through the summer… The first-year ice that survived the summer, now defined as second-year ice, will thicken through autumn and winter. However, it would take several more cool years in a row to build the ice cover back to the state it was in during the 1980s”

(National Snow & Ice Data Center, 2013)

I smell warming phase coming to an end and ice gradually coming back to 1980s level.

44,000 years ago was about 2/3rds the way through the last great glaciaction. I do not think Baffin Island was warm enough to prevent ice from forming 44,000 years ago. I do think however that Baffin Island might have been too dry to prevent ice from forming 44,000 years ago.

I was, I suppose, being somewhat sarcastic. If it was warmer in the past, we haven’t even reached that warmth yet.

The Earth, albeit quite slowly, continues to cool. Nature cares not what you or I “think”. In relation to Baffin Island, I merely point out what you probably already know. The Antarctic continent is the driest in the world.

It is also slightly covered with more than a bit of ice. Quelle surprise!

Yes, but not everywhere. Iwas thinking of the McMurdo Dry Valleys when I made my “too dry to prevent ice from forming” comment. But on second thought that might preclude the growth of lichen and mosses for subsequent radiocarbon dating.

Having carried out a great deal of research for my series of articles ‘hisroric variations in Arctic Ice Parts 1 and 2’ I have collected data back some 2000 years on the arctic region and do not recognise the scenario painted by the authors.

Variations in temperatures are well documented, for example they can be seen here in the Newfoundland board of trade journals which carries records from 1696

The great variations in ice amounts and warmth and cold, is also recorded in the following, condensed from the records of the Hudson Bay company, which appear to demonstrate that climate change is not a new phenomena.

“Over the fifteen years between 1720 and 1735, the first snowfall of the year moved from the first week of September to the last. Also, the late 1700s were turbulent years. They were extremely cold but annual snow cover would vary from ‘extreme depth’ to ‘no cover’. For instance, November 10th 1767 only one snowfall that quickly thawed had been recorded. June 6, 1791 many feet of snow in the post’s gardens. The entry for July 14, 1798 reads ‘…53 degrees colder today than it was yesterday.”

The Russian information gathered from the 1920-1940’s for ‘historic variations in arctic ice part 2’ prompted me to look again at my notes of research I carried out at the library of the Scott polar institute Cambridge in Sept 2012 which, as well as covering this period, also delved much further back in time.

From my research for part two, a comment about the northern sea route which started to open up again in 1920 and was fully useable by 1936 gave some resonance to earlier intriguing references to this area which at some point i hope to verify with other cross referenced material available.This comes from a Manuscript by M I Belov-‘history of the discovery and mastery of the northern sea route and arctic sea faring from the earliest times to the nineteenth century.’ (belov was subsequently seen as a political mouthpiece of the Russian establishment but then rehabilitated) It is a Typed manuscript which I understand was then printed in Russian but not English.

On amazon it says this; “The main body of this book are the portions of M.I. Belov’s book Arkticheskoe morepla[va]nie s drevneishikh vremen do serediny XIX veka (Arctic voyages from ancient times to the middle of the nineteenth century) that relate to the Russian discovery and exploration of this strait to 1800”–Pref.

A google search shows the ‘history and discovery’ book might be referenced here either as a printed book or as the manuscript;

“Tales of great expansion by various peoples including Russians into the far north from 6th century AD and especially 9th century onwards

A suggestion from him that it might be possible to find a route by sea between china and Europe around 1500, see ‘so called map of Russia of antoniy vid’ printed in 1931 by v a kordt. vid published this in 1555-the north east passage.in the 1550’s Ivan the terrible proposed a bounty for those attempting to get to china by sea. Many went and one expedition did not return until the 1580’s

Also 1556 accounts of walrus hunts increasingly further north to novaya zemlya on a regular basis

1580 muscovy co told of a sea route to ob without portage through matochkin shar which took 5 days but suggests that by the 1670s the hunters were unable to go as far north due to impenetrable ice.”

Were these journeys possible and might the arctic had melted sufficiently to achieve their objective of finding a northern sea route to China?

Russia-notwithstanding some severe winters recurring spring frosts and droughts, the 19th century ended in a warmer climate which continue into the 20th century peaking during the 1920’s to 1940’s. a period of comparatively warm conditions in all seasons during the first half of the 16th century was according to Lamb approx the same as western Europe and that climatic descriptions of the first half of the 16th century are in many respects similar to those during the first half of the 20th century.

Unusually hot dry weather in 1512 25, 33, 41, 42, 61, 71 and 1585. Although in general the 16th century especially (notwithstanding more frequent severe winters ) the first half featured higher temperatures (than the 15th century ) the recurrence of climatic extrema during that period was quite high. Climatically the first half of the 16th century were favourable for substantial ice melt.

European heatwaves on a par with that of 2003 in 1525 and 1616, sandwiched by the brutally cold winters around 1564 (preceded by calamitous harvests in 1556-9?) which heralded a half century of cold..

So, the Arctic had long periods of considerable warmth 500 years ago recorded by explorers and by such as Lamb and Jones. Numerous other references to past Arctic civilisations of the Bronze age available at the University of Halifax suggest the piece proclaiming this current unprecedented warmth is not backed up by the documentary evidence

Yes, that’s all very well for changes in climate. But now we have climate change to worry about. (Sorry about you missing all that heat in 1791, tonyb. It was actually down here in Oz, almost wiped out Sydney before it got started. Imagine a world without Australians!)

A world without Australians could be deemed perfect for some of our American denizens but me thinks it would be boring! As for the forthcoming test series between England and Australia, I think that we will get our ass whipped again and again, at least until some of the Aussie bats learn how to bat like Ian Bell.

Yep, his name was Watkin Tench, Captain of Marines, a Chestrian, and he was quite a character, all in a good way. His mate Dawes, a far more earnest type, was equally remarkable.

Tench’s journal was always meant to be published, but it remains a terrific eyewitness account. Here’s an amazing fact: Tench’s modern, and best known, editor was…Tim Flannery!

I doubt that Tench needs editing. I doubt the need for Flannery generally. Anyway, the pages on the El Nino of the early 1790s (the one which hammered the Deccan) are of special interest. I think our local klimatariat wishes they had never been written.

Hi tony-
In the Chasing Ice post Biddle linked this to my comment on the History of Sea Ice in the Arctichttp://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Pubs/Polyak%20etal%20seaice%20QSR10%20inpress.pdf
I call your attention to Figure 12 near the Summary. This shows the extent of Sea Ice from 1200 to recent times and I note a dramatic drop in Ice around the 1660s and 1760s as well as recently of course. But I dont see any drop for the MWP. Is this record consistent with your findings and do you have any similar chart showing a drop in Sea Ice Extent for the MWP? Thanks

“Fig. 12. Comparison of a multi-proxy reconstruction of sea-ice extent in the Nordic Seas during 1200–1997 AD (black curve; Macias-Fauria et al., 2009) and maximum Arctic-wide ice extent during 1870–2003 (red curve; Kinnard et al., 2008). The discrepancy between the two records in the early 20th century corresponds to an increase in the Atlantic inflow to the Nordic Seas”

Seems to graph of max extent amount ice in Nordic seas, 1200–1997
which is spliced with arctic wide, 1870–2003.
Most of MWP would be before 1200.
LIA: “It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, or alternatively, from about 1350 to about 1850”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
“Starting at the end of the 10th century, Vikings established hundreds of scattered farms along protected fjords, where they built their homes and churches. Life was good living alongside the edge of the glaciers, but by the 15th century the conditions had cooled dramatically, putting an abrupt end to their farming lifestyle.”http://io9.com/5974809/why-did-the-vikings-abandon-greenland

I would suppose that probably like possibly this year or the next the max arctic ice extent could be more significant in Nordic seas and could or could not be related to arctic max polar ice or min arctic sea ice.

“tony-
In the Chasing Ice post Biddle linked this to my comment on the History of Sea Ice in the Arctichttp://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/jbg/Pubs/Polyak%20etal%20seaice%20QSR10%20inpress.pdf
I call your attention to Figure 12 near the Summary. This shows the extent of Sea Ice from 1200 to recent times and I note a dramatic drop in Ice around the 1660s and 1760s as well as recently of course. But I dont see any drop for the MWP. Is this record consistent with your findings and do you have any similar chart showing a drop in Sea Ice Extent for the MWP? Thanks.

——–

I am working my way back through history with my series ‘historic variations in Arctic ice Part 1 and Part 2.’ The former covering the melt in the 1800’s and the second a highly edited version that was carried here recently covered 1920-1950. I do not recognise the Kinnard et al version of events. Polyakov has written a number of very good papers but it is sometimes difficult to unravel his narrative as they are sometimes appear a little contradictory.

I have gathered a considerable amount of material from a variety of sources so I am episodically aware of the surprising fluctuations in arctic ice levels through the ages, but have not put together a comprehensive narrative for this earlier period.

my own reconstruction of CET from its instrumental record of 1659 back to 1538 is noted, together with paleo reconstructions.

As can be seen, decadal variability is very large. CET shows a considerable rise in temperatures centred around 1540, around 1640 and another one centred around 1730 or so. Consequently the low ice dates you mention seem feasible. There was certainly a cold period in England around 1200 to 1250 with renewed warmth for the next half century and episodic warmth and cold over the next century .

The significance of using CET is that it is reasonably indicative of northern hemisphere temperatures and Arctic amplification can then be added.

The warmest period of the MWP was probably around 850 to 1180 AD so falls just before the figure 12. King Alfred was invited to support exploration of the newly opening Greenland around 880 although it was a century later that settlements were established there..

So parts of Figure 12 seem ok. I would strongly endorse the low ice period in the 1920-1940 period and would directly contradict Kinnard et al with their interpretation

Coming from the agricultural section of the U.S. and noticing the large amount of dust that gets into the air from that economic sector, I have always wondered about the quantity of dust that settles on the world’s glaciers, causing those glaciers to melt faster now than during preceding periods, all other things being equal.

If that were a factor, the claims about unprecedented warmth in the Arctic would be suspect.

“European heatwaves on a par with that of 2003 in 1525 and 1616, sandwiched by the brutally cold winters around 1564 (preceded by calamitous harvests in 1556-9?) which heralded a half century of cold..

So, the Arctic had long periods of considerable warmth 500 years ago recorded by explorers and by such as Lamb and Jones. Numerous other references to past Arctic civilisations of the Bronze age available at the University of Halifax suggest the piece proclaiming this current unprecedented warmth is not backed up by the documentary evidence”

Neither is it contradicted by it. How do you claim European heat waves on par with 2003 when there were no thermometers?

And how is European temperatures suddenly tell you about the Arctic?

Strange what skeptics will endorse. I thought I saw people above complaining that the Canadian site couldn’t represent the entire Arctic, but here you are claiming CET represents the entire NH and skeptics lap it up.

Say, be wary of post modern ‘narrative’ de-
con-structions using the very tools they decry
as inadequate, like language, ( selected ter
impress, think Sokal, never use one syllable
when five are possible) and a form of critical
argument,* though ‘rational’ is so outre.

In any event, how representative of the Arctic is their findings from Baffin Island? Well, it doesn’t even seem to be too representative even of Ellesmere Island and West Greenland.
Baffin Island to the west of Greenland (as any other place on the globe) is only representative of itself and the immediate surrounding. As you can see herehttp://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GrnlndT.htm
in the mid 1990s (hopefully with accurate records) the west coast of Greenland (Egedesminde 68.7N) was nearly 2C colder than the east coast’s and further north Scoresby Sund (70.3N). Non concluditur !

¶ “The age distribution of 145 radiocarbon-dated rooted plants that were exposed by ice recession in the year of collection along the highlands of Baffin Island, Arctic Canada, demonstrates that several ice caps are now smaller than at any time in more than 44 ka.”

¶ “There has been no intervening century during which summer warmth exceeded that of the last ~100 years.”

¶ “This is the first direct evidence that contemporary warmth in the Eastern Canadian Arctic now exceeds peak warmth of the early Holocene, when summer insolation across the region was ~9% greater than present.”

¶ “Recent laser altimetry data [Webb et al., 2009] indicates that ice bodies are losing mass at all elevations; hence, they are still adjusting to current summer temperatures.”

¶ “These findings add additional evidence to the growing consensus that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have now resulted in unprecedented recent summer warmth that is well outside the range of that attributable to natural climate variability.”

Summary Assertions to the effect that the conclusions of Miller et al are “unsupported” are so wrong-on-the-facts as to be utterly baffling.

Can you help us understand better your prima facie bizarre claims, Judith Curry? One step might be to abandon the passive voice. E.g., the passive-voice claim “extrapolating from one location in the Arctic to inferring Arctic-wide change is clearly not supported” begs the questions “not supported” BY WHOM?” … “not supported” BY WHAT ARGUMENTS?.

Conclusion Climate-change skepticism that points always to the weakest arguments, advanced by the least credible speakers, and exclusively focuses upon isolated cherry-picked claims, is an all-too-common skeptical practice that most definitely amounts to climate-change denialism.

Recommendation Step back from skeptical practices that amount to climate-change denialism, Judith Curry!

Because the notion you have presented that the world… is heading for levels unprecedented for millions of years is not backed by any empirical data, just by junk science reports like this one and hot air from you.

FOMD, ” Climate-change skepticism that points always to the weakest arguments, advanced by the least credible speakers, and exclusively focuses upon isolated cherry-picked claims, is an all-too-common skeptical practice that most definitely amounts to climate-change denialism.”

Unprecedented in 44,000 years, think about that a second.

According to Tierney et al. there was “unprecedented” warming in Lake Tanganyika ~55ka ago. The Siberian methane that is outgassing now if from ~90ka ago.

That kinda puts the LIA right in line with average glaciations, not too cold, not too hot. So saying today is “unprecedented” in x numbers of years in one location of the world should require just a touch more clarification. Of course is you compare everything to the Antarctic, everything is “unprecedented” doncha know.

Fan it is a pleasure to address your specious arguments
Judith Curry made a comment that extrapolation from one very small area to a much larger area, given the ubiquitous nature of climate is no warranted. A view shared by your colleges Tamino and Gates and me and 99.999 percent of reasonable , intelligent, thoughtful people. There might be 6 people in the world who disagree. I don’t know the other 5 .
As to the reason, citation and quotation , you are the only person, bar 5 in the world, who would insist on such bizarre demands attached to normal discussions.
Does it worry you? Stupid question . Should it worry you? Stupid question.
Do I care, stupid QUestion.
Answer , obviously I do.

Jim Bouldin has some pretty rude things to say about the Miller paper at his blog: see hrrp://ecologicallyoriented.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/bad-study-on/

“When I first started reading this I was actually excited about novel evidence that might be relatively decisive regarding how unique current temperatures are in the arctic, relative to the Holocene/Pleistocene. Alas, as I continued reading that hope faded quickly and I now instead marvel at how the authors could state the conclusions they do, given the methods and data presented.”

…..“But even if they are not, we have four sites clustered together at one end of the 1000km sampling transect that give very anomalous results relative to the 135 samples collected all along that transect. So why in the world are they focusing on those four sites, to the exclusion of the much more geographically extensive 135? How can the authors just blow past this fact without discussing why in any way? Reviewers, HELLO?? The authors then note the oldest radiocarbon ages are near the limit of the method and then hypothesize that these are therefore probably under-estimates. But by how much? This they address by referencing Greenland ice cores that (they state) show that one has to go back at least 110,000 years to get temperatures warm enough to have open ground. And the Discovery article and press release of course, mention this larger number”……..

“The authors conclude with this statement, which really pretty much gives away their bias:
“These findings add additional evidence to the growing consensus that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases have now resulted in unprecedented recent summer warmth that is well outside the range of that attributable to natural climate variability.”
No it does not thank you very much. The study doesn’t even address natural variability. And I thought the consensus was supposedly already pretty much full grown…that’s what I’ve been hearing anyway. And lastly, an area of a few square miles on Baffin Island upon which the thesis rests, does not deserve the general phrase “Arctic Canada” used in the title.”

Miller:
“Although the Arctic has been warming since about 1900, the most significant warming in the Baffin Island region didn’t really start until the 1970s,” said Miller. “And it is really in the past 20 years that the warming signal from that region has been just stunning. All of Baffin Island is melting, and we expect all of the ice caps to eventually disappear, even if there is no additional warming.”

I wouldn’t trust the accuracy of his dates without looking at the data for myself. I should imagine that the negative NAO conditions in the late 1950’s and late 1960’s produced warming there too. And recent warming most likely increased from around 1996, which is when the Arctic sea ice loss accelerated from, due to increased negative NAO conditions:http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/month_nao_index.shtml

” … we have four sites clustered together at one end of the 1000km sampling transect that give very anomalous results relative to the 135 samples collected all along that transect. So why in the world are they focusing on those four sites, to the exclusion of the much more geographically extensive 135? How can the authors just blow past this fact without discussing why in any way? Reviewers, HELLO??”http://ecologicallyoriented.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/bad-study-on/

Carbon dating appears to be usable only until about 50 K years in the past, hence the careful headline. But 50 K years ago was the middle of the last real ice age, Canada had ice 2 miles thick, so there was no warming at this time. Instead, the warming was about 120,000 years ago, toward the end of the last (warmer) interglacial. I do think that this study suggests, from one location, that the Arctic is genuinely warming. What isn’t clear is whether this is due to CO2 levels, or to black carbon emissions falling on snow and ice and causing it to melt more quickly. And it isn’t yet clear to me why this is even marginally catastrophic.

John, There is a difference between land based glaciers and sea ice. The ocean average temperature changes very little over a glacial/interglacial cycle. If you dig up paleo data on an island you are likely reconstructing sea ice conditions. Iceland is stays pretty comfortable thanks to the higher heat capacity of ice free oceans and the THC. This Arctic Warming paper is another in a series of CO2 mania driven drivel.

1930s/40s -> probably as warm as the late 20th century
~1 ka BP -> likely warmer than the present
most of the Holocene -> very likely warmer than the present
Holocene plateau -> for sure warmer than the present

“The ice cores showed that the youngest time interval from which summer temperatures in the Arctic were plausibly as warm as today is about 120,000 years ago, near the end of the last interglacial period. ”

Is Arctic warming as described above a harbinger for the coming of the next glacial period; ie the end of the present Holocene which is suggested to be overdue?

The larger picture of course is that as we head back to Pliocene-like warmth in the Arctic, with CO2 headed higher and higher, they’ll be all sorts of bench marks and previous records that will be exceeded. “Warmest in 1400 years, 2000 years, 120,000…” , all the way back to the mid-Pliocene like temperatures. Then, who knows, the human carbon volcano may have tipped the system enough to see Miocene-like warmth in a few centuries. A mere blink of an eye on a geologic scale. How many species will survive this “6th Great Extinction” event?

I’m in the skeptical camp (not denier camp). I mostly agree with Bjorn Lomborg and Mike Ridley that warming is happening, but much slower than the models suggest; that the costs of dealing with CO2 NOW are far higher than the costs of dealing with it in a couple of decades; that the poor of the world would much prefer that western countries spend monies on their present problems; and (my view, not necessarily theirs) that solar will be economic in a couple of decades, and when that happens, solar will replace, over a century, most other forms of generation.

That said, IF I believed that we really needed to act, now, in ways that injure our economies, a carbon tax is a pretty fair and even handed way to do so, especially if it lowers the costs of forming and running businesses. Much better than cap and trade, which as we’ve seen is subject to political manipulation and Wall St. types cornering the market (as they recently did for ethanol permits in the US, driving the cost up around 20 fold). Wall St. really likes cap and trade by the way, it creates a HUGE new market for them, and as just noted, they can really muck up economies, again, with such a market. If you like the Great Recession, you will love cap and trade….

But I don’t believe we need to act hastily, so I’m not currently in favor of a carbon tax, or any other economy crushing moves.

Skepticism is a tool, not a destination or badge. It is a way of acquiring knowledge. Currently, the of all “sensitivity” related data out there , the paleoclimate data from the last time CO2 was at 400ppm seems most credible and quite consistent with the warming we’ve seen in the Arctic. The planet heading toward a Pliocene-like relatively near-term future seems likely.

The Arctic, or more specifically to this article, the Baffin Island area, constitutes what percentage of the global area?
But, according to you, it’s somehow representative of global averages in past geological eras.
And then there’s the little matter of the summer temperatures apparently increasing faster than the winter ones.
As for your great extinction events, well some of us do have vivid imaginations but we don’t go around scaring kids.

Just don’t forget how many important modern clades evolved in the wake of the Permian Extinction Event, and the following Triassic Recovery. Dinosaurs (including birds), mammals, many important insect clades, gymnosperms and their descendant angiosperms, just to name a few important land clades.

Primates have probably been around for 90MY, based on DNA trees. Monkeys (as a general clade) maybe 50MY, well in the wake of the PETM. Best evidence for apes maybe 20MY, with only a few remnant “species” limited to very warm, humid areas. Most of the ape species went extinct between then and now. AFAIK the majority were probably adapted to more temperate conditions, although the evidence is far from conclusive.

An expansion of hot, humid regions might well be a great advantage for the surviving non-human apes, whose potential range would likely expand. Of course, that depends on whether the only really successful ape can prevent hungry members of its own species from hunting its closest relatives into extinction.

When it comes to anthropogenic extinction, direct interference such as hunting and habitat destruction for agriculture is (IMO) a much more powerful cause than “climate change”.

Yep, when the climate changes greatly, new niches open up for some species. Of course, it can be millions of years between an extinction event and the rise of new species…but that’s a mere blink of an eye in geological time.

Well, not all that shrew-like. Your statement seems to be true for 90MYA. At 55MYA, primates had branched several ways, all of which were mouse-rat sized at largest, but somewhat different from one another. The ancestors of monkeys probably diverged genetically at this point, although the lengthening of limbs and other changes seem to have come much later.

But the metabolism is probably not (very) dependent on size, subject to the regular square-cube relationship. And it’s metabolism, ultimately, that determines the ability to survive high temperatures.

Judith Curry asserts: “Extrapolating from one location in the Arctic to inferring Arctic-wide change is clearly not supported.”

angech posts “Judith Curry made a comment that extrapolation from one very small area to a much larger area, given the ubiquitous nature of climate, is not warranted. A view shared by your colleges Tamino and Gates and me and 99.999% of reasonable, intelligent, thoughtful people.”

You are 99.999% correct angtech!

What’s bizarre is that *none* of the peer-reviewed articles that Judith Curry quoted made that local-to-global extrapolation. More strongly, *no* peer-reviewed articles (known to me) make that local-to-global extrapolation.

Summary Peer-reviewed climate-change articles generically conclude that climate-change is real, serious, and accelerating only after surveying individual article-findings in *conjunction* with a substantial body of findings that are independent and accordant.

Conclusion Judith Curry is criticizing the climate-change literature for a flaw that does not exist in the articles that she cites.

The opinions of every scientist in the world, plus $5, will buy you a cup of coffee.

I point out again, because you are obviously a little slow, that the phrase “climate science” contains an oxymoron.

The study of variations in the averages of weather events is not a science. Taking an average of a series of numbers is not a science. Palmistry has more societal utility than climatology.

Individuals pay to have their palms read. They perceive a benefit in doing so. If you can show an instance where an individual willingly paid a “climatologist” for a view of the future, I will offer you a fulsome apology.

And please, no more inane and irrelevant links. They merely demonstrate that you are incapable of framing a précis of your views.

Jeff Skoll launched the Skoll Global Threats Fund in 2009 to tackle the world’s most pressing issues. With Dr. Larry Brilliant as President and CEO, the Skoll Global Threats Fund has a mandate to drive large-scale global change on the most critical issues facing mankind.

The Fund is seeking a creative and energetic team player to help build and manage the new Climate Learning Initiative. Reporting to and working closely with the Climate Change Director, this key staff member will lead implementation of the program. [further details at link]

No apology is necessary Mike Flynn, no matter whether that apology be fulsome or grudgingly tendered.

My welcome reward is the civic pleasure of helping to enlarge your conception (and the conception of Climate Etc readers and Judith Curry’s graduate students too!) of the private-sector investment in climate-change science, which is accelerating broadly at the same rate as sea-level rise and ice-mass loss.

Judith Curry, *none* of the articles that you referenced have the author list “MBH” [?]; neither does the word “teleconnection” [?] appear in any previous post.

Perhaps you are objecting to the following key passages in Miller et al. “Unprecedented recent summer warmth in Arctic Canada” (2013):

¶[8] The period over which recent warmth and melting may be considered exceptional is greatly extended by the surprise finding of four small, summit ice caps, from which all ten 14C ages on rooted vegetation exposed by recent ice recession pre-date the Holocene.”

¶[9] “The ancient rooted plants emerging beneath the four ice caps must have been continuously ice-covered for at least 44 ka. However, because the oldest dates are near the limit of the radiocarbon age scale, substantially older ages are possible. […] Regardless of the absolute age uncertainties, it remains clear that these four ice caps did not melt behind our collection sites at any time during the Holocene, but did do so recently, indicating that summer warmth of recent decades exceeded that of any interval of comparable length in >44 ka.”

Judith Curry, it is exceedingly difficult to determine what agitates you in regard to this plainly-stated reasoning and data-supported conclusion!

You say: “In the Chasing Ice post, I noted that the peak glacier discharge from West Greenland occurred in the 1930′s”. I went there and could not find it when searching for “discharge” and “1930”. (I am not saying it is wrong, but I am curious about what data you base it on).

Anyway 1930s were also warm in W. Greenland. So it seems logical to relate regional warming to ice discharge (see also Box and Colgan).

The opinions of every scientist in the world, plus $5, will buy you a cup of coffee.

I point out again, because you are obviously a little slow, that the phrase “climate science” contains an oxymoron.

The study of variations in the averages of weather events is not a science. Taking an average of a series of numbers is not a science. Palmistry has more societal utility than climatology.

Individuals pay to have their palms read. They perceive a benefit in doing so. If you can show an instance where an individual willingly paid a “climatologist” for a view of the future, I will offer you a fulsome apology.

And please, no more inane and irrelevant links. They merely demonstrate that you are incapable of framing a précis of your views.

major concerns coming tomorrow. responding in the professional literature takes 6 months, costs money to publish, and the audience is 10% of the audience here. Welcome to the 21st century and social media.

Geophysical Research Letters has now adopted the bizarre policy that it does not accept comments on published papers; if you want to respond you need to write a stand alone publication and submit to the journal. GRL has effectively stifled published discussion of its publications. Thank goodness for blogs.

Then reply in GRL. You are taking the easy way out by writing whatever you want here, with no peer review. I’ve been reading your blog for many months now, and I can’t recall even one real scientist who has ever responded here.

You don’t get it. GRL does not publish comments on their publications. John Bates and Andy Lacis are two that have recently commented here. Professional scientists mostly read and don’t comment here, but send me emails, which I don’t make public.

If the journalists you’re talking about are the likes of Richard Harris, then I don’t see how that matters much. He gave you a total softball interview that did not include the many hard followup questions that you deserved.

I assume that professional scientists correspond with one another — nothing special there.

However, your assumption that your comments here substitute for some kind of critical, peer review level commentary is, as far as I can tell, simply false.

Real scientists follow the professional literature, not blogs, let alone your blog. Anyone can write a blog. it’s easy. it’s safe. You get attention without any experts paying attention. You get just the kind of softball treatment that Richard Harris gave you — a shameful moment in journalistic history.

That image was obviously taken from Miller’s article [1] which is what the top-level post was all about. I simply highlighted the aspect that intrigued me, which is what one would normally do to make a point.

Unfortunately, this blog doesn’t allow us as commenters to display in-line images, which is what any fair-minded blog owner (such as myself, see http://ContextEarth.com) would allow if they were interested in a serious discussion.

It was as if I opened up the Gifford Miller journal article to the page that the figure was on and pointed to the curve and showed what direction the trend was following. It shows a long-term cooling followed by a recent uptick due to the last century’s warming. It helps substantiates the work of Marcott et al, by providing another set of data points.

I guess the problem is that no one that reads these blogs has access to any of this fire-walled material but me.

I would have thought it obvious that the term blog science was used disparagingly. Your marmy assumptions of intellectual and moral superiority notwithstanding. Something which is characteristic of AGW groupthink – which is inevitably accompanied by sneers and insults.

Your complaint is not about discussing science in an open format – which has a very long history. But of expressing opinions that are not one of the simplistic groupthink narratives.

You are trapped by your own belief system which has been formed form by the movement you aspire to be part of

Baloney. If I’m wanted to be a professional scientist I would have stayed in science. I took another path available to me. Blog posts aren’t science, period. They are an easy way to broadcast your opinion and get attention for it, without having to meet the standards of science.

Very few people read the pal reviewed journals. The people in Oz have rebelled against the silly, destructive carbon tax. The revolt is spreading. Your desperation is showing in your insulting assinine comments. Get your own blog. Realclimate is not getting the job done.

How many scientists read climate science journals, davey? They get one vote, like the rest of us. You Chicken Litles are not going to get your drastic mitigation without communication. You prefer denigration. It ain’t working for you. Try something else.

You are really dumb, davey. Your political activism is failing. The alleged settled climate catastrophe science is not convincing the general public. Climate scientists don’t get to institute carbon taxes. Try to catch up.

Welcome to climate science, Appell. It’s a soft science where opinions are like asssholes – everyone has one and they all stink. Your confusion stems from the fact that the disciples and sycophants believe it to be a hard science. It isn’t. Get over yourselves. You are practicing a religion where CO2 is the devil and you are a missionary. Incredible.

“Blogs are not (yet) where science takes place. Professionals read and follow journals, not blogs.” Don’t understand this discussion. Dr. Curry has testified that you are wrong: Real science is being done, on and behind the scenes on blogs and in email. I myself see that happening in mathematics in forums, in real time. Most mathematics results are well worked out long before they reach the journals.
You are claiming that the really important stuff in climate science is only in peer-reviewed journals. But you are not in the business, so why would we listen to you more than Dr. Curry? Why do you even think you know anything about it? There are plenty of stodgy scientists – maybe the ones you talk to are actually out of the loop? Or maybe you’re operating on some picture of science which no longer exists.

This is especially true, given that there seems to be good evidence that peer-reviewed journals have become badly politicized. We have testimony on that from James Annan http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2013/09/first.html (his paper with Michaels et al on how climate models have been falsified at the 5% level, which was blocked by peer review for no reason except that either (a) one reviewer was totally incompetent, or (b) that reviewer wasn’t going to put up with this result – yet), from Hans von Storch (his paper on the same subject, same result), until the more-or-less exact same result was published this year, too late – behold, the IPCC didn’t have any papers to include on the subject. We have testimony on it from Steve McIntyre concerning what happened to his papers, with complete documentation on his website for anyone who cares about how peer review worked for him. And we have wonderful testimony on it from Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and their friends in the climategate emails from the side of the manipulators.
Not all of this is conspiracy (the last case was). It is just much harder to publish papers on the skeptical side of things, even when they are good, and much easier to publish on the other side, even when they are bad. Peer review allows established powers to block challenges.

For me the most logical conclusion is that you are trying to defend a tool that the AGW Team has been using as a weapon. It may have been the best tool available in the past, but that doesn’t mean that it is going to be useful now, or trusted. The fact that you are trying to present it as the only way that scientists are allowed to operate just tells me that you’re more interesting in the Team winning its battles than in science.

A further issue is that some scientific topics on the public debate about climate change move much more quickly than the peer reviewed publication process. I saw this in a bit way following Katrina on the hurricanes and global warming issue (MSM, blogs, congressional testimony), and we are now seeing this re the ‘pause.’

And another issue is that the empirical data is reported on a continuing basis in many different ways, and NOT in the peer reviewed literature. This is where the proof that CAGW is just plain wrong will eventually appear.

“A further issue is that some scientific topics on the public debate about climate change move much more quickly than the peer reviewed publication process. I saw this in a bit way following Katrina on the hurricanes and global warming issue (MSM, blogs, congressional testimony), and we are now seeing this re the ‘pause.’”
——-
This is an important observation for certainly the speed of information flow is far greater in the social media world than in the peer reviewed publication process, but the signal to noise ratio is also much much lower in the blogosphere–meaning there is a lot more detritus one must weed through to find a few nuggets that may progress the science.

Judith has a point – scientists do read blogs…..and newspapers……and comics…

And they probably have as much impact in the scientific process.”

Let’s assume blogs are equal to comics.
Or let’s assume comics are interactive, and science are interested in them. What does this do to comics?

The “Lefty dream” involves a world run by scientist in communal political environment.
And Lefty are so brainwashed that when faced with their dream being actualized, they don’t even see it.

Let’s simplify, what if scientists wrote comics which were interactive?
One might assume you get better comic book, it sense they were less fantasy and idiocy and conform something more realistic.
This assuming that scientist should involved in the writing process. Or assuming scientist should involved in the political process. But this the lefty premise dream.
Or wouldn’t be better for the world, if Hollywood was not quite so “unscientific” or irrational, silly, clueless, etc?
That people in Hollywood had some clue what fracking was.
Or Hollywood was educated. Rather than merely nepotism, pretty faces, and etc.

But basically, what happening is internet is new medium, and medium largely started by scientists from the very beginning.
So it’s mostly been porn and science.

I’m an engineer, not a climate scientist and have recently discovered this blog. A breath of fresh air in a sea of agendas and misinformation. Just just can’t let this go though:

“Professionals read and follow journals, not blogs”

So just where do you think real scientific progress happens David ?. In professional journals. They may be read to keep abreast of supposedly significant developments, but the real work is done infomally, via discourse and debate. There’s also the question of how such journal papers are reviewed, in secret, or is it an open process ?. In the age of the internet and global communication, it’s done more and more in an open environment where it can be questioned and analysed. You know, the scientific process, to find the truth ?.

I think that scientists are not swayed by what they read in blogs or news items. The best the blogs can do is point them to a paper where they can verify the details of a point and its supporting science for themselves. Therefore David Appell is right on this matter. Science still takes place in the journal papers. Even here, many making a point refer to journal articles or raw data to back it up. You don’t persuade any scientist with your own opinion and view of the world if no other science supports it. It might work with the uninformed public, but not with scientists.

I think that scientists are not swayed by what they read in blogs or news items. The best the blogs can do is point them to a paper where they can verify the details of a point and its supporting science for themselves. Therefore David Appell is right on this matter. Science still takes place in the journal papers.”

Let’s assume this right.
But things change.
Socialism attempts freeze everything to the 1970’s,
but the world is moving. And the barricades are sand castles
in a rising tide.
So just because you don’t see the writing on the wall, doesn’t
mean there isn’t something written on the wall.

I guess I’m wondering why a professional scientist wouldn’t respond to her concerns about this paper in the professional literature (?)

1. Responding here doesnt Preclude doing something in the “professional literature. False choice David.
2. In the grand tradition of physics papers were often circulated for informal peer review. For example, rather than critcicize a couple of hansens papers we sent him our objections in paper form. No need to litter the journals with corrections and clarifications.
3. People actually get to choose what they want to spend their time on. Pointing out errors in a minor paper is not worth 6 months of Judiths time.
4. science publishing is changing. you are a dinosaur.

“Mosher: Are real scientists commenting here, with detail and substance?

On occassion. I also see them commented at RC on occasions.
I rarely see them commenting in journals, because
A) some journals have stopped accepting comments
B) the process of writing comments for journals is onerous

No, they are not — just pretend scientists and amateurs like you.

You keep trying to draw a distinction that is not at issue. The issue is
“Is judith obligated to—”

Write a paper if she disagrees and use NO OTHER FORM OF DIALOGUE. You comment demands this, and you are wrong. You
are wrong factually, pragamtically, historically, and ethically.

“Pretending that blogging is real science is an easy way out, that avoids criticism and real analysis. It is not how science gets done, or how it advances.”

Nobody but your own fat self is pretending this is science. Papers are not science. They are advertisements for science. Blogs are not science
they CAN provide a place for people to comment freely on “science” actually on papers.

In short you demand that judith only comment on papers by writing papers. otherwise she is not “doing science”

Does this mean she cant write a letter to the author? cant talk about it at a conference? cant give a lecture about it? cant talk about it at coffee?
cant write about it in her diary or journal? If she gave a lecture and criticized this paper would your fatness scream

I’m sure there have been threads on this before, but from just watching from the sidelines, what I’m seeing is demonstration, time and time again, of the old adage “if you’re a hammer, all your problems look like nails”. The mistake that I see many, maybe even most physicists make is seeing the entire climate system as a radiation problem rather than a combined transport/thermodynamics problem. Most physicists are better versed in quantum mechanics than in thermo, and better versed in thermo than in transport. Consequently, they obsess over the greenhouse part, and brush the combined heat/mass/momentum transport and phase change phenomena to the side.

IMO, the people who have a more balanced view of these phenomena are physical chemists and chemical engineers. I would like to hear more from p-chemists and ChE’s and less from pure physicists.

Of course, a really good physicist (like Tomas) should know all of this. It’s just that most don’t. And others like yourself, seem to have a balanced understanding. But when somebody says that it’s all IR QM and Clausius-Clapeyron, it’s like taking an engine apart, putting it back together, and wondering what all those extra pistons and valves are for.

I can vouch for David Appell. He is a professional AGW cultist that I watched over the years bring nothing of substance to any debate – only a false circle (you know what) logic to discussions that don’t fit into his parameters on AGW and the “green” movement.

It just shows what an irrelevant twit you are whining about Judith not doing the scientific hard yards and blogging instead. Your intellectual dishonesty – not mention inadequacy – is not going to buried under more obfuscation.

The idea originated with Marcia Wyatt in her dissertation. The paper that emerged in 2011 was described by Pielke Sn thus.

‘A very important new paper has been accepted for publication in Climate Dynamics that adds further substance into the topic of spatio-temporal chaos that was discussed on Judy Curry’s weblog Climate Etc in the post by Tomas Milanovic titled…’

Stick around but do shut up – you may learn something although that seems immensely unlikely given your penchant for inanity.

His blog has 16 posts he did. Of that 13 have zero comments there is one with two and one with one. The one post that has comments (15) had three commenters with 7 posts and 8 responses from David Appell. His blog mostly consists of regurgitated political pablum with no original work.

I don’t know maybe blogging from his mom’s basement?:

Gosh and he has the gall to call out Dr. Curry’s professional scientific credential; from wiki:
Curry is a professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and has held this position since 2002.[3] Curry serves on NASA Advisory Council Earth Science Subcommittee whose mission is to provide advise and recommendations to NASA on issues of program priorities and policy.[4] She is a recent member of the NOAA Climate Working Group[3][5] and a former member of the National Academies Space Studies Board and Climate Research Group.[3][6]

Curry is a former professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder and has held faculty positions at Penn State University, Purdue, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.[3][6] Curry has been active in researching possible connections between hurricane intensity and global warming.[7][8] Her research group has also done research linking the size of hurricanes and resulting damage that showed that, among other things, the size of the hurricanes was an important factor in determining the number of tornadoes spawned by the system.[9]

Curry is the co-author of Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans (1999),[10] and co-editor of Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences (2002).[11] Curry has published over 130 scientific peer reviewed papers.[4] Among her awards is the Henry G. Houghton Research Award from the American Meteorological Society in 1992.[4]

This excludes the ENSO dragon-kings of 1976/1977 and 1998/2001 – which are extreme events at climate shifts in the sense of Didier Sornette. This leaves some 0.2 degrees C warming – of which at least half was natural decadal variability. So we get at most 0.05 degrees C/decade AGW. Scary hey?

There are at least three ideas in there that are not AGW. Appell understands none of it seemingly. AGW is a teddy bear. Climate shifts may be a wilder beast but the world is not warming for a decade to three hence for the reasons Kyle Swanson hides in the fine print.

Well if you have been paying attention, the NPR interview was about the pause, i.e. about science. After the interview, Richard Harris apparently changed his mind re what he wanted the interview to be about, and used a few throw away comments i made about policy.

And why did richard harris want to interview me about the pause? Because of the many blog threads I had written analyzing that topic.

“Time will tell how important it is… but it wasn’t a blog post, was it? It was a peer reviewed scientific paper, which has been exactly my point.” That wasn’t the point being made. The point is that, even by your definitions, Dr. Curry’s outranks you by a lot. Why do you think that your pronouncements of what science has to be have any relevance or authority? You are arguing by definition: It only counts if you say it counts.

Anyhow, it’s dumb. If you’re right, and climate scientists only pay attention to peer-reviewed journals, then climate scientists are fools. It certainly wasn’t like that when I was in physics in grad school. Journals were one way to find out about stuff. There were plenty of other ways, including talking to people or listening to their presentations. Journals were important because it’s a big world. But no one accepted results because some shadowy peer reviewers gave it their stamp – at least, no one good. If they cared about the result, they went and worked it out themselves.

When it comes to paleo, it is worth paying attention to McIntyre’s blog (you may be surprised that I say that). I think he is fair and only attacks weak parts of papers, which in the case of Miller and previously Marcott were some items around the edges that could be open for debate, not their conclusions on the amount of Holocene cooling and the recent reversal of that trend.

“But concern about what is emerging as a crisis in science extends beyond the open-access movement. It’s reached the National Institutes of Health, which last week launched a project to remake its researchers’ approach to publication. Its new PubMed Commons system allows qualified scientists to post ongoing comments about published papers. The goal is to wean scientists from the idea that a cursory, one-time peer review is enough to validate a research study, and substitute a process of continuing scrutiny, so that poor research can be identified quickly and good research can be picked out of the crowd and find a wider audience.”

The NIH comment policy certainly beats the direction Geophysical Research Letters is heading according to Dr. Curry above. The restriction of comments to those who have published previously doesn’t seem such a big deal. There are plenty of outlets for skeptical views on scientific matters.

Any genuine (as opposed to cosmetic) positive change in allowing dissent in the government/science/industrial complex should be applauded. Because it certainly isn’t the norm.

I love the greenhouse effect. I believe in it wholeheartedly. What I am not convinced about is the catastrophic BS. Where’s the proof? If the world burns up, it will be your fault for being so freaking lame and unconvincing.

Now, now, children, be civil. Don’s position is a perfectly legitimate one. There is a lot of controversy about feedbacks and climate sensitivity. Strongly positive feedbacks are required for the alarming outcomes.

The natural internal variability in the Arctic seems to be an exceedingly complex dance between atmospheric circulations, sea ice, ocean circulations and ice sheet dynamics, on a range of timescales. We have some hints about how all this interacts, but much is unknown. In light of this, simplistic inferences about global warming in the Arctic seem unjustified.

Don’t forget Wind. I suppose this is a pet peeve of mine, but “We have, . . .”
Some scientists use this “We,” like my mother, in a rather disgusting way. It’s an appeal to authority. A “select” group of people doing exclusive things. It’s a false identification of an anonymous group. It’s anti-science.

If you want to speak authoritatively, simply say “I.” It’s clearer what you mean, since you can’t possibly know all the information the group “We” has, in any event. Nor, unless you have lined up and created the “We” can you speak authoritatively for them. If you want to assert something, such as this is the state of the art, then assert it:

“There are some hints about how all this interacts, . . ”

But screw that disgusting, softly paternalistic, and oh so arrogant “We.”

In which case put their pictures up in the Consensus Hall of Fame. Or make them lead authors for the IPCC or something. Or, perhaps another Nobel prize for political correctness could be arranged ? Even a half-Nobel would do nicely.

Ah, no. Seven billion people breathing, heating, generating electricity, using internal combustion for travel and transport on the surface, over the oceans, through the skies, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week?

“Utilizing the second law of thermodynamics, it is assumed that all non-renewable primary energy consumption is dissipated thermally in Earth’s atmosphere”. Really? Do you really believe this? Have you ever seen an image of the night side of the Earth from space, recording a range of wavelengths, including the visible?

Moving along, I find more assumptions used to feed models.

Surprise, surprise! The model outputs show that the assumed effect of anthropogenic carbon conversion to CO2 is less than the assumed effect of CO2 “warming”. Since it is impossible to either warm an object, or prevent it from cooling, by wrapping it with gas of any sort or concentration, their model, assumptions, or both are flawed.

I assumed, perhaps wrongly, that your other references were in like vein,and similarly execrable.

Is “mousenuts” another example of Warmist word substitution, like “forcing’?

Ask yourself the question: How much would the Earth surface need to warm so that the upwelling radiative flux through the atmospheric infrared window would increase by 0.03 watts/m^2 and dissipate the whole anthropogenic heat flux?
The effect would be the same if the average total solar irradiance were suddenly to increase by 0.03 watts/m^2.

“Utilizing the second law of thermodynamics, it is assumed that all non-renewable primary energy consumption is dissipated thermally in Earth’s atmosphere”.

Mike Flynn > Really? Do you really believe this? Have you ever seen an image of the night side of the Earth from space, recording a range of wavelengths, including the visible?
—
Do you have a fix on how inaccurate or unrealistic this approximation is? Or are you just venting?

Mike Flynn > it is impossible to either warm an object, or prevent it from cooling, by wrapping it with gas of any sort or concentration
—
It is possible. Cooling can be slowed if
* the wrapping responds with downwelling radiation
* the ambient temperature of the wrapping is lower than that of the object. And remains so even when heated by the object. After which the object cools more slowly into the wrapping.

The quote “Utilizing the second law of thermodynamics, it is assumed that all non-renewable primary energy consumption is dissipated thermally in Earth’s atmosphere” was taken from the paper. Read it carefully. I assume that the authors meant what they wrote, otherwise they would have written something different. Now read my response carefully.

Slowing cooling is not warming. I know Warmists think it’s the same thing. Warming is shown by an increase in temperature, not a decrease.

Can you see the difference? Probably not. I’ll give you an example.
The Earth has taken around 4.5 billion years to cool to its present temperature. That’s an average of about one millionth of a degree per year. That’s very slow. That is not warming, it is called cooling because the temperature has fallen, not risen. Believe it or not.

Relating to your second comment, I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talking about. I am not sure why you think I grossly misrepresent anybody. Are you able to give me an example?

The IPCC says manmade global warming is not separable from natural variation before 1950 and only partly detectable since (although 100% based on unvalidated models now known to be running too hot because of a huge and unsubstantiated assumption about declining natural variation).

The Arctic generally and even Baffin Island are known to be as hot in the 1930’s.

Taken together it is obvious there is nothing unusual about current warming in the Arctic. This paper seems to want to include the 1930’s as a 20th century highspot of warming due to the entire existence of mankind on the planet, which is contradicted by Gisp2 among many other reconstructions.

As such this paper highlights just how easy it is to get alarmism peer-reviewed, published and touted in the media with no attendant academic skepticism whatsoever. It could very well even be a Sokal-type hoax in that it demonstrates just how much current scientists are prepared to extrapolate from minimal data and apparently even minimal knowledge of their own supposed specialist subject.

JamesG claims [wrongly and without verifiable citation] “The Arctic generally and even Baffin Island are known to be as hot in the 1930′s. Taken together it is obvious there is nothing unusual about current warming in the Arctic.”

We continually cite references to arctic warming in the 1920 to 1940 period but you just ignore them. The arctic periodically has large melts, the two most recent being the 1920 to 1940 period and around 1820 to 1850 . Melting In the most recent period was similar at times to recent warming although I do not think it reached the levels attained in 2007 and 2012, for whatever reason.

According to Phil jones the two warmest consecutive decades in Greenland were the 1920 1930 period.

We will have to wait another 6 years to see if the modern era beats that record

Arctic amplification apparently. The bulge of the 1930-1940s observed globally was amplified in the arctic.
Someone earlier showed this plot

Globally, the warming was only about 0.8C over this period, but in the Arctic it is approaching 3C. So, sure warming did occur earlier just like it warmed globally, but it was also amplified in the Arctic.

“Your link made no reference to The 1930′s
We continually cite references to arctic warming in the 1920 to 1940 period but you just ignore them.”

You can lead an FOMD to water but you can’t make her drink.

I personally kind of like, Fan. I think she’s well meaning and shows a kind of courage here. But she’s absolutely unable to assimilate contrary information. Since I don’t believe she’s a troll, it only leaves one explanation.

There are some things I’d expect someone to just know before s/he starts to discuss the Arctic and one of those is the temperature in the 30’s. To assert “unprecedented” change in the Arctic with citations that do not mention that word, nor are for the entire Arctic is not any kind of refutation of my point.

You talk much about skeptics refusal to believe that something is unprecedented but when a single paper attampts to refute an entire body of work by many other scientists, including the authors own previous work (he apparently predicted a coming ice age in the 70’s) then skepticism is the only rational position. One can even say that the mass consensus of scientists disagree with this paper! But science doesn’t depend on consensus does it?

Previous scientists have of course asserted that mans mere existence has changed global climate and it may even be somewhat true but it has not yet been seen as a bad thing: If we managed to stave off an ice age then hoorah! The notion before us is that accelerating modern CO2 levels will cause catastrophe. The simple rejoindre that the 30’s was as warm as today is enough to tell us that there is no “unprecedented” in the Arctic and hence no alarm. I could go further and say that the Arctic should be the only place we look for manmade climate change – because of the amplification factor you mention but also because of the lack of urban heat island effects. The reason why mainstream scientists do not consider that approach is because the Arctic matches perfectly with all solar reconstructions and they’d have to conclude that there is nothing alarming or unusual going on.

The sun removes ice every summer. In Warm times when the oceans are warm and wet, many places get ice replenished. In Cold times when the oceans are cold and frozen. many places do not get ice replenished. More ice gets removed in cold times and more ice gets replenished in warm times. If a place lost ice volume, it was more likely from cold than from warm.

“Regardless of the absolute age uncertainties, it remains clear that these four ice caps did not melt behind our collection sites at any time during the Holocene, but did do so recently, indicating that summer warmth of recent decades exceeded that of any interval of comparable length in >44 ka.”

This is false reasoning.

That point X is now exposed from beneath ice for the first time in 44K years doe not mean that the temperature over the ice is now warmer than at any time over the intervening period.

How do “scientists” get away with saying such things in peer reviewed papers?

So why didn’t the stuff start growing again when it reached those temperatures? Was the vegetation afraid that it would be discovered by Gifford Miller in the future?
It must have been flora from the species Skepticus Vegitus.

Webby, how does ice melt? Is the volume of ice proportional to energy added, or is the rate of ice volume change proportional to energy added?
Once you’ve sorted that out in your head then you will have answered your own question.

Lolwot, I don’t understand why there is always such a knee-jerk reaction to just assert the scientific claim is wrong. μWatt spends a few minutes thinking about the problem, and thinks he can upend a researcher that has been studying this problem for decades?

Because of the gradual elevation change, there is a range of zones where the icecap could have peeled back to according to a simple lapse rate formula ~6.5C per kilometer. Any one of those spots could have supported vegetation depending on how warm it got. Yet only today has the snowpack peeled back 800 meters, allowing opportunistic vegetation to grow at that elevation, which is consistent with several degrees of warming.

The gradation of elevation allows a range of temperatures but only today have we seen the 800 meter plant-life.

The paper discusses a couple of essential issues related to the relationship between melting and temperature.

It’s argued that summer temperatures are the main determinant for the rate of melting and that direct heating by solar radiation is a lesser factor.

The authors bring up the point that the areas considered were at a higher altitude than the surface of the Laurentine Ice Sheet reached. Thus the they were not covered by LIS.

They argue that the hilltops have such a shape and size that they could not support more than about 70 m of ice based on ice-mechanical constraints.

One point that they do not discuss is the amount of annual snowfall. If that had been consistently high enough, the melting of the ice cap could have been considerably slower or even stopped in spite of higher summer temperatures. Whether such a high snowfall can be excluded by some strong argument, I have no idea.

maybe the hilltops could support more than 70 m of ice, if their slopes were surrounded by the Laurentide Ice Sheet.

That’s unlikely, if the photo that the paper shows about one of the hilltops is representative. The ice sheet could help in that case only if it’s surface level is very close to the altitude of the hilltop. In that case the whole claim that the ice sheet was too thin would be very uncertain.

McIntyre posted photo (fig.3.) of the moss site hills and points out that Eemian moss site is found at 1395 m and Holocene moss site is found in close proximity at around 1435 m. What’s up with that? And Mc provides link to this paper, which is research on the area that potentially sheds some light on the ice thickness issue.

I would add that whether or not Telford succeeds in saving the paper from Bouldin, all of this is pretty good proof that Appell is wrong. The real science is taking place right now at climateaudit, Telford’s blog, and Bouldin’s, as three experts in the field (I don’t know if McIntyre has expertise in this part of paleoclimate though it seems clear that he has audited some similar work before, but the other two certainly are) thrash out the issues. Anyone not reading the blogs is missing the science, and might well get a totally wrong impression from the journals on where things ended up. Who wants to be (at least) six months behind?

At least the blogs are accessible to everyone. I can’t wait for the day when all government-funded papers are free to the public, as they should be, along with mandatory publication of all code and data. Things could really cook then :)

Lolwot, the key points they were missing were filled in in minutes. If Telford is missing key points in return, that will be clarified as well. Remember that some of these are actually in the business. People in the business can miss key points – even if they read an awesome paper that just proves it so well no one could argue. Peer reviewers can miss key points. Authors can miss key points.

I think you (or Appell) might be assuming something like, The only real professional in the group is Telford, and of course the authors of this paper. The rest are clowns pretending to be scientists and Telford is just schooling them. The real pros don’t need to read this stuff.

Suffice it to say that my experience is not like that. In such discussions, I generally see both sides making reasonable and sometimes important points, and sometimes papers have been withdrawn as a result. People who don’t read these discussions risk getting totally bogus impressions, completely out of the loop.

So what if Arctic ice melted and exposed rocks not exposed for 44k years? That’s perfectly consistent with natural climate cycles. The last interglacial period was 114k years ago. We are now in an interglacial period since 12k years ago. These rocks get exposed during interglacials. 44k years ago must be unusually warm. We expect this to happen 114k years ago and now.

Certainly interglacial cycles are natural. They have been operating long before humans evolved from apes. Assuming your graph is correct, the change in snowline occurred in about 250 years. What’s the corresponding change in temperature?

The Younger Dryas was definitely not man-made. It changed the temperature in Greenland and Europe by 5C in a decade or so. Is the supposed man-made warming in the last 250 years faster than what nature can do?

I should not respond anymore to such idiotic statement. Of course it’s warmer today than 44k years ago. Interglacial periods are warmer than glacial periods. The brain must be on vacation.

“Ice cores are used to obtain a high resolution record of recent glaciation… Ice core data shows that the last 400,000 years have consisted of short interglacials (10,000 to 30,000 years) about as warm as the present alternated with much longer (70,000 to 90,000 years) glacials substantially colder than present.” (Wikipedia)

Present interglacial is not unusually warm. AGW does not fly because of slight cooling in 1940-70s and lack of significant warming since 1998. Despite 33 billion tons of CO2 pumped to the atmosphere every year.

Guys
If A does something out of pure self-interest. It makes A prosper. It makes A fat. It makes A happy. A likes what he does and wants to continue doing it.
When asked, A says: “Oh what I am doing is good for B. B will have a much easier life because of it. Longer growing season, whatnot. No really, what I am doing is in B’s best interest.”
Question: How gullible does B have to be to buy this?

A (to B): I am going to impose and enforce a substantial tax on carbon pollution (i.e. the energy you use for daily living). I will use the proceeds from this tax to finance my pet projects and reward my political supporters, so I will benefit. But the real reason I am doing this is because this will prevent catastrophic global warming from occurring, and therefore be in “your best interest”.

Oh, Mike, I saw your post at the top of the discussion and had to laugh:
“I guess it just goes to prove that the predictive power of cycles may be over rated.”
That is meaningless gibberish. A “cycle” is by definition something that repeats. If it does not repeat then it’s not a cycle. Therefore, no, the predictive power of cycles is not overrated. Cycles by definition have predictive power.
But what you are really trying to say is that Milankovic may have been wrong. Hmm yea maybe. I would dismiss that though as arrogant second guessing.

I don’t use words that refer to cycles in their scientific sense (unless inadvertently) for exactly the reason you point out. I was using the word in the Warmist sense, which assigns a different meaning. Their “cycles” occur in the future as well as the past.

Your statement that cycles by definition have predictive power is trivially true, but meaningless in any useful sense.

As an example, you might predict that the peak voltage of a precisely regulated 1Hz sine wave would occur around one second after the last measured peak, into the future, without end. You would be chortling with glee until it didn’t, for any number of reasons, in the real world.

Stick with your belief in the predictive power of cycles. Lots of people do. You can no more see into the future than I. The finance industry loves cycles, until they discover they weren’t cycles at all. This realisation usually comes too late.

And so it is with the pseudo science of climatology. Climatological predictions (projections, scenarios, whatever) make economic predictions look positively brilliant by comparison. And some people call economics “the dismal science”!

Give me a break, please. Cycles? You know the results into the future?

It doesn’t matter anyway. You can no more warm the Earth with CO2 than you can cycle to the Moon. Wave to me when you get there, and I will admit that I was wrong. I won’t be holding my breath in the meantime!

@MF: As an example, you might predict that the peak voltage of a precisely regulated 1Hz sine wave would occur around one second after the last measured peak, into the future, without end.

No one would predict such a thing. This is a straw man argument.

If you have observed a million cycles with no interruptions, it is reasonable to predict one more cycle. Laplace’s rule of succession estimates that when m out of n trials have been successful, the probability that the next trial will be successful is (m+1)/(n+2). So if you’ve seen 8 cycles in a row, Laplace tells you that the probability of seeing another cycle is 9/10.

This assumes no other information. If you have good reason to doubt whether there will be another cycle then you may reduce the probability accordingly. For example if you tossed a fair coin 8 times and it came up heads every time, you may be justified in dismissing this as a coincidence and estimating the probability of heads next time at 1/2 rather than 9/10. But you should also be wondering whether the coin really is a fair one.

@ olwot | October 27, 2013 at 9:22 pm |
it’s strong evidence it hasn’t been this warm for 44k years
___________________________
LOL, I doubt the Vikings, who were frozen out of Greenland, share your inane opinion.

In terms of how we measure how warm the world is, it has not been as warm on yearly average as it was in 1998. Every year since has been cooler.
But global average temperature is merely a custom that was adopted of collecting weather data from a lot of different weather stations.
And there are other ways one could measure it: glacial advance and retreat. And sea level measurement.
During our interglacial period sea levels have consistently risen over decadal time periods. And it’s very likely sea levels will continue to rise until such time as we enter the next glacial period. In terms glacial retreat, there is there has been reduction glaciers throughout the interglacial period, but there has been advancement of glaciers during cooler periods in our present interglacial period. And the Little Ice Age is called this because during this period globally glaciers were recorded as advancing. And the Little Ice Age has somewhat definite ending point of around 1850 due to this advancement of glacier, turning around and having relatively fast consistent retreat of glaciers, globally [most glaciers].

And it supposed as reasonable the glacier advance of the LIA will mostly have been “erased” within the next few decades or say, prior to 2100.

But it seems that since sea level is as high as it’s been since the time of the last interglacial [Eemian, which ended about 114,000 years ago}.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian
One could say if measuring the earth’s warmth based on sea level, at presently we at warmest time in about last 120,000 year. But we also much warmer during the Eemian in terms sea level [around 5 meters higher] and there was a lot less glacial ice. And in terms of air temperature, probably more than couple degrees warmer. Of course in our present interglacial period we have have air temperature as warm as couple degrees warmer than our present temperatures.
So air temperatures in this interglacial period have over thousands of year period [8000 years] has generally declined, in contrast to long trend ever rising sea level. Due lower air temperatures, polar regions have become cooler during last thousands of years up to the present, but Temperate Zone glaciers have been losing mass [though there are fluctuation [decadal and/or centuries] of polar warming periods as there has been fluctuation in Temperate Zone glacial advances [ie, LIA].

There are [obviously] missing pieces. More work on such things as stadium waves may help fill in some of pieces.
But idea that arctic region is warming than it has been in +44,000 is absurd.

Fervour doesn’t favour facts where Warmists are concerned. The remains of the many buildings under the ice were obviously put there by the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Supreme Deity of the Pastafarians) at the behest of Big Oil. I wonder if he is related to Olive, Popeyes girlfriend?

Johanna,
I do like ‘ Live well and prosper’ because it’s life affirming and
i – need- as – much – of – that – as – i -can – git – given – serfs
– out – in – the – field – experience – serious – and – heart – felt
– vicissitudes, of which, clever Johanna, with yore breadth of
knowledge, you would be well aware. )
Regards,
Beth -the-serf

I see it as sort of an Irish “(may you) live well and prosper” sign-off, which one might hear when leaving the pub after a few pints, rather than a more Germanic or Hebraic command (or commandment), such as “(you must) or (thou shalt) live well and prosper”.

Seems pretty presumptious of you too read that he is instructing you about anything. Too much of this nowadays – angry, judgemental people looking for fault everywhere, where there is none, rather than assuming good faith or (actually ?) having the emotional intelligence to recognise humour when they see it.

An interesting read here, what’s “valid” science, talks about talks etc, which provoked the thought that there’s a parallel between this and the open source vs proprietary software debates.

Let’s take an example: Years ago, operating systems for computers were written by monopolistic companies, were very expensive, had onerous licensing conditions and source code was usually not released. The over a decade or so, open source operating systems such as Linux appeared, for which there was no charge for the right to install, use and modify. Over just a few years, these became so good that nearly all the proprietary systems had disappeared.

Ok, so what is the parallel ?. One of the main reasons open source became so successfull was that it democratised the development process. Anyone can download, modify and feed back changes for review. The whole process is conducted in the open, for anyone to see and comment on. The state of the art currently is where large companies like ibm and hp contribute millions of $ to open source projects. Development is often very fast, accurate and can have hundreds of individualts contributing, debugging etc, depending on the popularity, or potential usefulness of a project.

Just how could such a model be helpful for science ?. Seems to me the current model which encourages secrecy in research, “first to publish”, commercial advantage and next year’s grant worries slow progress, A more open environment could save a lot of time and effort. Perhaps blogs like this are the start…

Dear Judith Curry
Once again you will excuse my English, is french –speaker, and I do what I can…
It seems to me that a simple reflection can be a major methodological problem in this study. We know that the period 1920-1940 has been warmer in the Arctic than at present (see the first figure of this NASA text http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/arctic_ice3.php and Tonyb comments: https://judithcurry.com/2013/04/10/historic-variations-in-arctic-sea-ice-part-ii-1920-1950/ ) .
Ok now let’s see what the abstract says and how to apply the “Trickster for Dummies Volume 1 Chapter 1”:
“Here we use 145 radiocarbon dates on rooted tundra plants revealed by receding cold-based ice caps in the Eastern Canadian Arctic to show that 5000 years of regional summertime cooling has been reversed, with average (note: simply average not averageS) summer temperatures of the last ~100 years now higher than during ANY CENTURY in more than 44,000 years,”
Suddenly disappears in the 1920-1940 period (“Hide de decline”, “Hide de decline” !) with the single and unique Centennial average.
Even better! “1920-1940 period” contributes greatly to increase this average which then moves back further in time to get to this alarmist and relentless that ” 100 years now higher than falling on any century in more than 44,000 years” observation . For the rest, and to do “good science” that ordinary people are really impressed you coat it all in a jumble of proxy (145 radiocarbon dates are rooted tundra plants Revealed, bla bla bla ) and you carefully select the location “Eastern Canadian Arctic” (be careful!, most gossips might say that you’ve done the analysis in several places and keep only what is indicative of your thesis or “cause” in the final study…

The McClenney post has links to several papers, of which two are:
1. The End of the Present Interglacial: How and When? broecker.pdf
2. The MIS 11 – MIS 1 analogy, southern European vegetation, atmospheric methane and the “early anthropogenic hypothesis”: cp-6-131-2010.pdf